


Dream With Me While I Die

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Bottom!Sam, Curtain fic-kind of, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Porn With Plot, Post-Series, Schmoop, Sick Dean Winchester, Swearing, Wincest - Freeform, and anything else I forgot, bottom!Dean, yes there is a plot-this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-25 15:58:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 58,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester has survived forty-two years, thirty-eight of them hunting things that should only exist in nightmares and between the pages of books; he's made it through Hell, an aborted apocalypse, Purgatory spilling its guts into the mainstream population, angels falling from heaven, and his own demonic soul trying to take center stage. The gates of Heaven and Hell are finally shut, sealed for good, and the monsters have taken to the furtherest, darkest corners of the earth. He and Sam finally have a chance to kick back and maybe just retire for good. But it's always when you aren't looking that something so ordinary sneaks up on you.</p><p>Dean doesn't have long and Sam isn't going to let him go easily. A lot of the options he might have once had went away when the neon went out on the 'Open for Business' signs on Heaven and Hell, but he isn't about to give up. He has a plan, if he can just track down what he needs and then convince Dean that it's the right thing to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walk It Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ObsidianRomance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianRomance/gifts), [JustineDelarge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustineDelarge/gifts), [Askance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/gifts), [Colette_Capricious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colette_Capricious/gifts).



> This is part of my current NaNoWriMo project, so bear with me as it will probably come in fits and starts and will need some serious editing in the end. However, I thought that posting it out as I was going might help me get the end goal, so thanks everyone for putting up with me!
> 
> Also a huge thank you to ObsidianRomance, JustineDelarge, and Askance for their excellent writing, character work, and story lines which have provided me an amazing amount of inspiration with this piece. Thank you so much!  
> ADDENDUM: As this story has progressed and I have--somehow--found time to read as well, I'd like to also add Colette__Capricious to my list of inspirational writers. Her work is fantastic and her tone is real and true to the characters and she has this wonderful thing that I'm sadly lacking--a sense of humor. :)
> 
> I don't own anything, just borrowing for a bit of fun and frustration.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ulcer? Maybe. Flu? Possibly. Serious? Hope not...

At first, he said it was an ulcer. 

Honestly. He should have known better.

“Dean, these things can get bad,” Sam said, scrolling through one of the dozen medical websites he’d been trolling since Dean had made the off handed excuse that morning after Sam caught him white knuckling the kitchen sink because one of the vague and irritating pains he’d been feeling the last few weeks had shocked him with a much sharper relative. “They can eat right through the lining of your stomach.”

“Kinda thought that was the definition of ‘ulcer,’” Dean muttered, surreptitiously rubbing at a spot under his sternum.

“They can _perforate_ ,” Sam continued.

“Well, that sounds like fun.” Dean dropped onto the couch and pulled a large leather bound journal onto his lap, ignoring the cramp in his midsection, and flipped idly through pages.

Sam slapped his laptop closed. “This is not something to screw around with, Dean. You need to get checked out.”

“Jesus, Sam! I don’t _know_ that’s what it is,” Dean said, irritated to the point of raising his voice. “I was just tossing out an excuse. Hell, it’s probably just a stomach ache. I was bound to lose my cast iron lining eventually I suppose. And, Christ! Who the hell gets through as much shit as we have in forty-two years—.”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Yeah, whatever. You’re no spring chicken,” Dean sneered. “So, who survives all the crap we have and _doesn’t_ get an ulcer? Huh?”

Sam wasn’t even slightly mollified, but Dean lifted the journal up, blocking his view of his brother, and effectively shut the conversation down.

Next, he blamed it on the flu.

“Dean, you haven’t even touched your burger,” Sam said around a mouthful of salad.

They didn’t go out often anymore, and ever since Dean had made the half hearted remark about an ulcer, Sam had nearly embargoed the kitchen at the bunker, taking over most of the cooking and keeping Dean on a diet devoid of anything he considered remotely edible. Grease and fat were completely off the menu, sugar was replaced by honey and agave, coffee was replaced with herbal tea, and anything that even resembled a spice or seasoning went right out the window. 

But tonight was Dean’s birthday, and Sam didn’t have the heart to keep him from celebrating with some of the things he loved most, so he’d surprised Dean with an evening out at one of his favorite diners. One that specialized in thirty-five flavors of pie including a mile-high lemon meringue that was waiting in the wings for when Dean finished off his burger and onion rings.

Dean eyed the nearly half pound of beef sitting between layers of onion roll with six— _six_ —thick strips of bacon, nearly an inch of lettuce, and three juicy slices of fresh tomato like a lion eyeing a downed zebra on the savannah. He leaned in over the plate, seemed to consider it, grimacing a little, and then leaned back with a defeated sigh. 

“Sammy, I’m sorry. It looks good. Real good. I just…I guess I’m just not as hungry as I thought.”

Sam set down his fork, brow pulling down in real concern. “Are you feeling all right?”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Maybe I’ve got a touch of the flu or something. Just haven’t been hungry lately.”

Sam  nodded. “Yeah, I was kinda noticing that. I just thought you didn’t like my cooking.”

“Dude, your cooking sucks,” Dean said with half a smile.

Sam smiled back. “Jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean shot back automatically. He crossed an arm over his middle and took a slow breath against another cramp.

“Dean?” Sam leaned forward, reaching across the booth, worry tugging down at the corners of his already fading smile. Dean had broken out in a sweat, his face drained of color. “Dean, you okay?”

Dean fought against the sudden nausea for a few seconds before it became apparent with the upward rush of acid in the back of his throat that it was going to be a losing battle. He turned out of the booth and bolted for the restroom, leaving Sam behind him with his hand hanging in the air, half out of his seat, staring after his brother with a panicky expression. 

When Dean came back to the booth ten minutes later, crunching on a mint from the bowl beside the register, Sam had the rest of their food packed up in a neat stack of boxes. Sam looked up at him.

“I think we better get you home.”

Dean didn’t have the energy to argue. He’d emptied his stomach of everything it had in it and considering this was the second of these episodes today that wasn’t a whole lot. The phantom stabbing pains and bouts of cramps had been getting worse over the last weeks and now were giving way to random waves of nausea and vomiting. He’d been keeping a pretty good handle on it in front of Sam, surviving mostly on antacids and ginger tea that he’d read somewhere online was supposed to help with an upset stomach, but it seemed things were about to get a little out of hand.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Sam drove while Dean slouched in the passenger seat, resting his head on the seat back, taking a little comfort from the fact that he was in his baby, someplace he’d always considered safe no matter how much danger or pain they were in. Nothing could touch him in the Impala.

It had a lot of memories, this car of his. Theirs. It was true John had pretty much turned the Impala over to Dean—in hindsight he wondered if maybe it had been deliberate in that John had some idea of what was ahead for the boys and wanted them to have a place that they considered safe and could always be together—but the car was just as much Sam’s now, too. They’d laughed in here, cried in here, had their arguments and their ‘talks’ and sat in weighted silences that seemed like they would never end. They had escaped near death behind her heavy steel doors and driven straight into it again the very next day. 

As many times as she had been rebuilt, Dean was always meticulous to her details, never letting any of the memories get lost to her repairs. When they had nothing else, they always had the Impala, and she knew how to take care of her boys.

“Thanks, by the way,” Dean said, ducking off memory lane before he had a head on collision.

“For what?” Sam said.

“Dinner. My birthday. It was real nice.” Dean grimaced. “Sorry I couldn’t do it any justice.”

Sam shook his head. “It’s fine. You’re probably right. You must have picked up a bug somewhere. I’m just sorry I didn’t notice earlier before I drug you out tonight. But it’s okay. Really. We’ll get you home, tuck you in, keep you on soup and liquids for a couple days, and you’ll be right as rain.”

“Dude,” Dean scoffed with a grin, “‘right as rain’?”

Sam grinned back. “Ouch. I didn’t actually say that, did I?”

Dean just laughed. It hurt, but he did it anyway. He rolled his head a little and reached a hand across the seat. Sam never took his eyes from the road, but immediately took Dean’s hand in his and squeezed lightly, twining their fingers. It annoyed Dean most of the time when Sam wanted to hold hands, or touch, or cuddle, or some such chick flick nonsense, but right now it felt good; good to know that Sam wasn’t just driving right now, his brain was working at its usual lightening pace to try and figure out what was wrong with his older brother. Because despite what Dean kept saying, Sam wasn’t convinced it was an ulcer or the flu, and even though Dean didn’t want to admit it, not to himself and most certainly not out loud to Sam, Sam was probably right and something was very definitely wrong.

 

Sam stowed the leftovers in the fridge on the off chance that Dean might actually feel like eating tomorrow. At this rate, he was willing to let Dean eat anything his heart desired just so that it was food and it was being eaten. While Dean didn’t seem to have noticed, or at least not that he was letting on, his appetite had waned to almost nothing and he had dropped at least twenty pounds in the last six weeks. Sam had complained over the last year that Dean could stand to lose a few but he was thinking more in the realms of five to seven and then just replace it with some muscle mass. Hunting or not, Sam was pretty vigilant about staying fit; and it wasn’t that Dean didn’t, he just didn’t keep it in the forefront of his mind. Sam didn’t push him too hard because the truth was they both deserved to be a little lazy after all those years spent hunting and training, running and chasing, battling to stay at the top of their game every second because the moment they went lax could be their last. 

This kind of weight loss worried Sam, though. He’d been all over the internet, had about a dozen theories in hand, but hadn’t worked himself around to confronting Dean on any of them yet. The few times they came close, Dean just blew him off and made some excuse much like he was making now about having the flu, and then he’d walk away. Sam didn’t want to pursue it then because it would just mean an argument and Dean honestly didn’t look like he had the energy for it.

Sam sighed and shut the refrigerator.

“Hey,” Dean said from the doorway. “I think I’m gonna go crash.”

Sam turned around. “Okay, I’ll be right in.”

Dean ducked his head a little. “You don’t have to. It’s early yet. I know you like to read for a while before we turn in.”

Sam picked up easily on the subtle tone in Dean’s voice that was saying just exactly the opposite of what his words meant. “I can read in bed…if you don’t mind?”

“No. No, I don’t mind,” Dean said, and Sam could see the tiny smile of relief flicker at the corners of his mouth before he turned away to go down the hall to their bedroom.

Sam went to the library and picked up his laptop and an old grimoire written by a Romanian witch a few centuries ago. His Romanian was pretty rough, but he was making headway slowly. He had plans of translating it since he hadn’t been able to find any previous versions in English. 

By the time he got back to the bedroom, Dean was already in bed, eyes closed but not asleep. Sam stripped out of his clothes, pulled on a pair of flannel pajama pants and brushed his teeth before crawling in beside him. Once he was settled with the grimoire propped on his stomach, he reached an arm leisurely across the space toward Dean and sighed contentedly when he felt the weight of his brother’s head on his shoulder. It wasn’t often Dean would curl into Sam’s side. Dean was normally the big spoon and the more dominant of the two of them, in bed and out, just by dint of his personality type, but occasionally he needed to be the one who was taken care of, and Sam reveled in those moments. 

The grimoire was just a prop. Sam hadn’t really had any intention of reading it. So, after a minute or two, he closed it quietly and set it on the bedside table, flipping out the light.

Dean shifted beside him, finding a more comfortable position for the arm caught underneath him and then slung a leg over Sam’s thighs. He pressed in closer and Sam could feel the half hard length of Dean’s erection through their pajama bottoms. 

“Nothing gets you down does it?” Sam whispered in the dark. He could feel Dean’s megawatt grin in return even if he couldn’t see it.

“You know me,” Dean said a little slyly. “All I need to make me better is a shot of—.”*

Sam turned his head and planted a firm kiss on Dean’s upturned mouth. “Don’t. Say it. Just don’t.”

Dean snickered against Sam’s mouth and then proceeded to lick it open so he could scoop his tongue inside and taste the last minty hints of Sam’s toothpaste.

Sam shuddered and turned on his side to pull Dean closer, tangling their legs and bringing their stiff, eager erections together. He slanted his mouth and met Dean’s powerful, delving tongue move for move. Dean’s hand went down to Sam’s hip and pulled him in until he could wedge his hardened flesh in the crook of Sam’s hip and thrust there, long and slow making Sam’s shiver with need.

Sam pulled back a little, breathless. “You sure you’re up for this, Dean? Because—.”

“It’s my birthday,” Dean growled, moving to nip at Sam’s exposed throat. “I want my present.”

Sam made a low desperate sound and then turned his head to lick and nip at the tender spot under Dean’s ear that made him shake with wanting.

“Jesus, Sammy, you know just how to treat me,” Dean moaned.

“”Course I do,” Sam breathed against his skin as he worked his way down Dean’s neck to sink his teeth into the fleshy part of his shoulder and suck eagerly until he drew blood up to the surface.

“Always like to leave your mark on me, don’t you, Sam?” Dean said, head thrown back as more shivers tripped down his spine at the feel of Sam’s sucking against his skin, but more at the memory of Sam laying claim to him again and again over the years.

“Mine,” Sam snarled low and worked his way down to a stiff nipple where he bit lightly to elicit a shocked groan and then licked for a set of twitchy shivers and finally sucked tenderly for a long low moan of pleasure. Sam felt Dean’s hand working its way to the waistband of his pajamas and caught it in a firm grip. “Your birthday…let me.”

Sam settled Dean’s hand somewhere innocuous and then pushed his long fingers down the back of Dean’s pants, digging into the huge, strong muscles of his ass and lifting, pulling back until he could work his fingers down further, press them against the tightened ring of muscle and make Dean spasm all over from the pleasure. 

“Jesus, Sammy…”

Sam grinned wickedly, tugged Dean’s pants down around his hips and lifted his top leg to rest across Sam’s hip so that he could reach more easily the tight, hot spot that made Dean come all undone. Sam felt a slick of sticky pre-cum against his belly and swirled his finger through it, brushing against Dean’s swollen head in the process.

“Wouldn’t want to waste this, now would we?” Sam said and worked his slick finger up inside Dean’s hole a slow fraction of an inch at a time, all the while kissing and licking and sucking at Dean’s mouth and neck and any other bit of flesh he could reach.

Dean was panting, hips making little thrusting moves, trying to fuck himself on Sam’s one finger. Sam could feel the powerful squeeze and pull against his knuckles and ground his cock against Dean’s hip.

“Yeah, Sam, that’s it…Jesus that feels so good,” Dean murmured. 

“Like that?” Sam asked devilishly. 

“You know I do,” Dean rasped as Sam crooked his finger and nudged that spot, _fuck yeah, THAT spot._

“How about this?” Sam pulled out and Dean whined in protest, but Sam was back in a second this time with two fingers and had Dean rutting against him and cursing frantically as Sam fucked him long and slow with two long fingers.

“Oh, fuck! Sammy, please…” Dean begged, clutching at Sam’s broad shoulders.

“Please what?” Sam whispered into the tender shell of Dean’s ear as he crooked his fingers forward again and felt Dean clench around him hard.

“Please,” Dean panted. “Gotta come, Sammy.”

“You think so?” Sam teased. “You really ready?”

“Oh yeah. So ready,” Dean groaned.

Sam smiled even more wickedly. “Ask nice.”

Dean bit back a cry. “Please, Sammy, make me come.”

Sam obliged Dean, sliding down under the sheets and taking his brother in his mouth in one smooth motion, working his tongue against the throbbing underside of his swollen cock while he kept up a matching rhythm with his fingers. The other palm he kept flattened against the taunt muscles of Dean’s belly where the tell tale twitch and clench would let Sam know just how close his brother was to release.

“Guh…Sammy!” Dean’s fingers knotted in the hair at Sam’s nape. “Sam!”

Sam pulled back on Dean’s cock, tasting the first spurts of cum on his tongue, suckling his soft swollen head, denying Dean that final flight for just a few seconds with his suddenly gentle, laving tongue curling and teasing at the slit where more thick, salty cum pearled and Sam licked and swallowed it away.

Dean’s whole body went tense, his ass gripping Sam’s fingers, cock full to the point of bursting and throbbing for release. He was gasping and twitching in desperate need when Sam finally let him have it and swallowed him down, sucking hard, humming against Dean’s hypersensitive flesh and fucking his fingers up Dean’s hole at the same time.

Dean came in a long full body spasm that lasted a good minute and a half, coming and coming until he didn’t think he could ever again, emptying himself thoroughly and completely into Sam’s hot mouth. White lights popped and exploded across his vision and his ears filled up with the rushing sound of his blood in his veins and the heady, primal cries issuing from his own throat.

Sam gently came off of Dean, licking him clean as he went and ever so slowly pulled out of Dean’s still spasming body. He slid upward and wrapped his arms around his brother, holding him until his muscles unlocked and let him sag back to the mattress in a boneless heap while his whole body trembled with his exertions. 

“Sammy, that was…amazing,” Dean said when he got his breath back. He shifted, trying to fit himself more snuggly against Sam’s side and his thigh brushed against Sam’s still achingly hard length. His eyes turned upward in the dark to Sam’s face. “Ah, baby boy’s still hurting, huh?”

Sam gently evaded Dean’s questing hand as it tried to fist his cock. “Hey, birthday boy, remember. You get all the attention.”

Dean shook his head against the pillow. “Birthday boy wants his last present right now.”

Sam’s breathy objecting turned into a groan as Dean found his swollen flesh and pumped it long, slow, and hard, fingers rough and powerful against his sensitive skin. Sam liked it like this. Almost nothing was better than Dean’s warm rough palm wrapped around him creating that sweet agonizing friction that drove him right to the edge and sent his diving over. Dean had always said Sam was easy because all it ever took was a hand job to make him come hard and fast, but Sam knew it wouldn’t ever work with anyone else. It was just Dean; the perfect temperature and texture of his hand, the way his fingers tightened and released just at the right time with just the right pressure, the strength in that hand—a strength that was symbolic of the man himself and was the center point to Sam’s whole world, had been since the day he was born. 

“That’s it, Sammy,” Dean coaxed, pumping Sam’s cock just the way he knew he liked it, feeling dribbles of warm cum spill over his fingers, easing the friction and slicking his strokes. Sam’s breath hitched and lodged in his chest as he writhed under Dean’s ministrations, hips thrusting to match Dean’s rhythm. “That’s it. Just like that. Gonna make you come, Sam. Come all over. Come undone for me, baby boy. Come apart at the seams. Spill every drop of yourself all over just for me.”

Sam cried out, hips bucking up with a force that only Dean had the strength to match, and did just as his brother asked and came hard and wet and fast all over Dean’s hand and his own belly and chest. 

“That’s my boy,” Dean whispered appreciatively, laving up a long strip of cum from Sam’s chest with his tongue and humming approval at the sweet-salty taste.

“God, I hate you…” Sam gasped half heartedly, grinning like an idiot at the darkened ceiling.

“I know you do, Sam,” Dean teased.

“It doesn’t take anything! You just whisper a few dirty words, give a little tug, and I come all unraveled for you,” Sam protested.

“Yup,” Dean said, rolling to his back. “I’m just that good.”

Sam smacked Dean across the shoulder with a limp noodle hand. “Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

Sam rolled over and tucked himself under Dean’s shoulder, settling his ear where he could hear Dean’s heartbeat. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, Sammy. Love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (* Dean's line ends with, "penis-illin." This is something my husband loves to say when either of us is not feeling well, and I kind of assumed it was out there in the ether somewhere, but just in case it's not...here's the inside joke for you)


	2. Ordinary Will Get You Every Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets a prognosis. It's not good.

 

 

Dean spent the rest of the week and most of the next on the couch. When he did finally force himself to get up and around, it wasn’t because he was feeling better, it was out of desperation for a change in scenery and to keep Sam from worrying any more than he already was. The pain in his stomach was getting more acute by the day, and when he could convince himself to try and eat anything even though his appetite was non-existent now, he would usually throw it back up inside of an hour. He could hardly get across the floor without feeling the acid taste of nausea at the back of his throat, and he barely had the energy to stand much less do anything productive.

But Sam was looking more and more fierce in his worry by the day, and Dean knew it was only a matter of time before the cork blew and Sam took matters into his own hands. So, he dutifully sucked down the protein drinks Sam stuck in front of him, kept it down as long as he could manage and then threw up the rest when Sam got out of earshot. Sam fell for the deception enough that he started in on soups that were mostly liquid or pureed, and Dean went through the same routine with these. Soft high calorie foods came next, Sam seemed to have abandoned his health regime in order to just get food down his brother’s gullet. Ice cream appeared in the freezer, pudding in the cupboard, and pasta was on the menu at least once a day, for the carbs Sam said. 

Dean ate, usually only a fraction of what Sam put in front of him, but Sam still considered it a success, and on the rare blessed occasion, Dean was actually able to keep it down. His energy levels were still at an all time low, but he managed to put a good face on it for Sam.

Sam had pitched the burger from the diner the next morning after Dean’s birthday, promising to give Dean a re-do on his birthday dinner just as soon as he felt better, but he’d saved the pie until the meringue had all but dissolved, finally giving up and pitching it in the trash well into the next week when Dean showed little sign of improvement. 

Dean had lost at least another five pounds. His jeans were only staying up by the grace of a belt and his shirts hung on him like he was made of sticks, shoulders protruding all sharp and knobby. At night, when Dean slid in close to Sam, shivering from the chill and his drastic loss of insulating fat, Sam would splay his fingers over his ribs and suck back tears at how he could count each and every curved bone with ease. 

It finally came to a head one afternoon over bowls of chicken soup and biscuits. 

Dean was fiddling with his spoon, stirring it around in his soup, but never really taking a bite. Sam put up with it for a few minutes, but finally put down his own spoon slow and deliberate and folded his hands in his lap, and Dean knew the jig was up.

“Dean. We’re going to go to the doctor. Tomorrow.”

“Sam, we’ve talked about this—.”

“Yeah, Dean, we’ve talked until I’m blue in the face, but you aren’t listening!” Sam ground his teeth, trying to regain his calm. “You keep saying it’s nothing. It’s an ulcer. The flu. Something. Anything! But you won’t go get checked out.”

Dean dropped any pretense of taking a bite of soup and looked across the table at Sam. His eyes were fierce and angry and red with retrained tears, and it made Dean’s heart hurt. “Sam, it _is_ just a bug. It’s just taking a while to get out of my system.”

“Weeks?!”

Dean pushed back from the table. “Look, Sam, I’m not going to any damn hospital and letting them stick things in me and poke and prod me and take pictures of all my insides. What do you think they’d have to say about all that lovely etching on my ribs, huh?”

“We don’t have to go to a hospital, Dean!” Sam slapped the tabletop in frustration. “All I’m asking for is a trip to a damn doctor’s office. Innocent enough. We tell him what’s going on, and we get this fixed.”

“How ‘bout we don’t waste the time and money for him to tell me I have acute indigestion!” Dean fired back. 

“Dean, please. Please!” 

Sam was at the end of his rope, Dean could see it in his eyes, but whatever _this_ was, Dean just needed to walk it off. Wasn’t that what John always taught them? ‘Take it like a man. Walk it off, son. Never let them see you bleed.’ Dean had suffered and survived a lot worse in his lifetime, this was just taking a little longer. 

“Sam. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay—.”

The surge of nausea took Dean completely off guard, coupled with one of the worst stabbing pains he’d felt so far just under his sternum. He doubled over mid-sentence, shoved back from the table so hard he knocked the chair over backward and threw himself in the direction of the kitchen sink just in time to vomit up the acidic contents of his stomach and…blood.

“Dean!” Sam was behind him, one arm around his chest the other against his forehead. Dean’s eyes shot wide at the blood dripping down into the sink, splattered up around the faucet. His whole body shook with pain and adrenalin and shock. He knew the second Sam saw the blood, too, felt every muscle tense up in readiness for action, some action, _any_ action, to stop whatever was hurting Dean. “Jesus Christ, Dean, I—.”

“Sam.” Dean covered the hand Sam had reached around him with his own and squeezed hard, letting Sam support him, take his weight, wipe the blood from his face with a cool, wet towel. “Sam, I think…hospital might be a good idea.”

 

A battery of tests including every pokey, proddy nightmare instrument Dean had ever imagined and thirty-six hours later, a grim faced doctor came to sit with them in the room where it seemed Dean had been plugged into every machine the hospital could spare, drugged to the point that he couldn’t even grumble about it, and declared the diagnosis was stomach cancer.

A few years ago, Zachariah had thought it would be a good persuasive tactic to give the boys advanced stomach cancer. That episode had lasted all of maybe a minute and a half until Castiel had saved their asses, but just the memory of that pain made Sam flinch so hard that Dean, even in his muzzy state, took notice and reached out a hand to which Sam latched on with a bruising grip.

“It’s in its late stages,” the doctor said quietly as if the volume of his delivery might soften the blow somehow. “It’s extremely aggressive. I…would like to say that there is something we could do at this point. If we started high dose chemotherapy immediately, we might be able to slow it down a little.”

“But?” Sam said, sensing the reluctance in the doctor’s tone.

“The medicine would probably make him just as sick as he is now if not more so, and the time it would gain us…”

Sam’s fingers tightened on Dean’s. “Not worth it,” he finished for the doctor.

The man nodded. “The very best we can do for now is to keep him comfortable. Painkillers. Intravenous nourishment since I doubt you’re able to keep anything down?” Dean gave a minimal nod. “Right. Beyond that, just focus on enjoying what time you have left.”

“And exactly how much time is that?” Sam asked, his voice flattened and beaten down by the overload of emotion thunder-storming inside him.

The doctor shrugged carefully. “It could be a few months, or just a few weeks.”

Sam nodded very slowly, swallowing hard. He focused on the cut in the linoleum to the left of the doctor’s right foot where he had it planted for balance as he sat on the stool a few feet from them. He was afraid if he looked up the man might burn on the spot from the fury in Sam’s eyes, and if he looked at Dean, well, he would just crack right open then and there. 

Dean rallied in the face of the painkillers dripping into his blood and looked the doctor square in the eye. "I'm not staying here."

"Dean—.” Sam started to object. 

Dean squeezed his brothers fingers. Hard. "I'm going home."

The doctor looked a little hesitant, but he nodded. "Something might be able to be arranged with hospice." Dean had no intention of letting some nurse intrude on his and Sam's home but he let it go for now and nodded in agreement. "Well, I'll leave you two alone and go check on what we might be able to have set up for in-home care. I'll check in on you in a bit."

Dean nodded and Sam sat mutely in his chair by the bed until the doctor left, thoughtfully closing the door behind him. Silence swelled and filled up the room until the pressure of it was almost a physical pain against Sam’s eardrums. He had the inside of his bottom lip caught firmly between his teeth and his nostrils were flaring with the effort he was putting into keeping his breathes shallow and even. 

"Sammy..." Dean shook Sam's hand a little to try and get his attention. "Sam. Keep it together for me. C'mon, just until we get home. Then you have my permission to have as big and girly a come-apart as you want to. Hell, I might join you."

Dean started to sit up and push the blanket back. Sam snapped out of his daze. "Dean, what are you doing? You can't leave!"

"Who says I can't? I'm a free human being. I can check myself out of here whenever I damn well please. It might be against the doctor’s recommendation, but I can still do it." He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the IV in his hand. "Help me with this, would ya? You and Bobby were always better with needles than me."

Sam shook his head like a rebellious child. "Dean, no. You need to stay here. They can give you medicine and—.”

"And what, Sam? Keep me doped so that I barely know where I am, so that I sleep away my last few days, weeks, whatever? No, Sam. I'm not staying here for a night, or a day, or a week. After all the shit you and I have survived. I sure as hell 'm not dyin' in some damn hospital." He held out his arm for Sam to remove the IV needle. Sam still resisted. 

"You'll be in so much pain, Dean."

Dean smiled wryly. "Sam, you and me, we know what pain is. We've felt every kind and flavor heaven and hell had to dish out and then some. If there's one thing we know better than anyone else, it's pain. I can deal with it. _You_ can deal with it. Now yank this thing before I do it myself and bleed all over the sheets."

Sam chewed harder on his lip but got up to search the cabinets and drawers for some gauze and a bandage just in case Dean did bleed. He pulled the thin flexible port out with slow ease and held a square of gauze to the back of Dean's hand with his thumb for a minute until the tiny wound clotted. 

"Good." Dean slid off the bed, moving easier even under the strong drugs than he had while trying to hide just how much pain he was in over the last few weeks, and turned a circle looking for something. "Now, what'd they do with my damn clothes."

"I've got them," Sam said defeatedly, lifting up the large plastic bag that contained Dean's boots, jeans, and shirt. His coat was over the back of the chair Sam sat in. 

Dean grinned, took the bag and upended it on the bed, shedding the embarrassing hospital gown and sticking his legs into his jeans. "You know, if these things have to be this revealing, you'd think they could at least make them a bit sexier, huh?”

Sam couldn't find it in himself to even scowl at Dean's observation. He just stared into the middle space as Dean got dressed.  He felt numb. Cold. Empty. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to walk around without his soul for that year nearly a decade ago. He had been able to recall a lot of the things he had done, but not what it felt like to do them, what it felt like to be so empty inside that he could commit the atrocities he had without so much as a flinch. Maybe that had been the point, to not feel anything at all. 

He wondered if it felt anything like this.

“Sam,” Dean was standing in front of him, hand out. “Let’s blow this joint.”

Sam looked up, stood up, stared at his brother for a second like he was trying to remember who he was and then just nodded and followed Dean out of the room and down the hall.

One of the nurses at the nurse’s station called out as they went by, coming around the desk to chase them down with a clipboard when Dean refused to stop. 

“Sir? Sir, wait, you can’t just leave. You need to—.”

Dean swung around, Winchester charmer of a smile firmly in place, but his eyes glinted dangerously. “Look, Nurse—,” Dean squinted at her name tag. “Melanie. I’m leaving. I’ll sign whatever you want me to, but I’m walking out that front door in five minutes.”

Nurse Melanie looked a little intimidated by Dean’s intense gaze, but also frustrated that he was prohibiting her doing her job. She glanced at Sam, but didn’t find much help in his glazed expression. “I just need you t-to sign out if you’re leaving, but Dr. Mead said that you’d be staying for observation, and he was making inquiries on h-hospice, and…” Her voice trailed off as Dean’s smile took on a slightly threatening tilt. She held out the clipboard with a helpless little sigh. “Please just sign. And if you could leave your information, so we can get in contact with you about the hospice care…if you want.”

Dean scrawled something at the bottom of the clipboard that could be construed as any number of signatures since he wasn’t positive which of their ID’s Sam had used, then he wrote down Sam’s cell number in the bottom corner and circled it, handed it back to Melanie.

“That number there will get you in contact with this big guy,” he slid Sam a look. “He’ll take care of whatever you need.”

“Thank you, sir,” Melanie said a little weakly and stood bewildered in the middle of the hallway as Dean turned on his heel and walked out, Sam following mechanically like a dog on some invisible leash.

Dean leaned against the side of the Impala and waited for Sam to catch up. Sam had his hands jammed in his pockets and he was staring blankly out ahead of him a little like he used to do when Lucifer was still sitting pretty in his head. He stopped at the front corner of the car and looked over at Dean, fished around in his pocket and pulled out the keys, staring at them like he couldn’t quite figure out what they were for or what he wanted to do with them, then he held them out to Dean.

“No, man, it’s okay,” Dean said. “I’m feeling pretty good right now, but I don’t know how long it will last, and I have to admit that there’s another slightly more transparent half of you hanging off your left shoulder, so…”

Sam nodded mutely and continued around to the driver’s side.

The trip back to the bunker was quiet. Sam didn’t speak, still in some kind of waking coma over the news Dr. Mead had given them. Dean didn’t try to turn on any music even though it would have helped keep the noise of his thoughts at bay. They were clamoring at the edges of his brain for attention trying to raise their voices loud enough to be heard, but just like he’d done with the pretty little nurse at the hospital, he smiled viscously and turned his back on them. He wasn’t ready for a replay, yet. When Sam finally broke out of whatever protective shell he’s sunk into there was going to be plenty of replay. 

Sam parked the car under cover, the weather reports were saying something about sleet that night, and waited for Dean to get out of the car and precede him into the bunker. Once they were inside, Sam headed straight back to their bedroom. Dean stripped out of his coat and headed to the kitchen to see if maybe something in the refrigerator could tempt him now that he actually felt decently good enough to keep something down. 

He didn’t get too daring, opting for a small cup of leftover chicken soup that Sam had fixed the other night. He held the mug between his hands, letting it warm him and made a mental note to turn up the heat in the bunker another couple of degrees what with the winter chill coming on. He took tiny, slow sips of the soup, testing each swallow to be sure it wouldn’t come back up on him, and he was most of the way through the cup before he realized that Sam hadn’t come back out of the bedroom and there were no sounds of any kind coming from that direction. Dean set the rest of the soup on the counter and headed down the hall.

Sam was sitting on their bed, elbows propped on his knees, fingers twisted together between them, head hung low between his shoulders. Dean propped himself in the doorway for a minute, waiting in silence for Sam to acknowledge him if he wanted.

“Sam,” Dean finally said. Sam raised his head, and Dean was actually a little surprised to find he hadn’t been crying. His eyes were still glassy and his expression blank, but there were no tears. Dean came across the space slowly to sit down on the bed beside him. He put a hand on Sam’s knee, was a little more surprised at the flinch in Sam’s muscles when he touched him. “Sam? If you need to—.”

“Don’t.” Sam jerked his head in a sharp single shake. “Just. Don’t.”

“Sam?” Dean let his hand slip away, but Sam caught at it desperately and pulled it up to tuck it under his chin, holding on so hard Dean felt a couple of his knuckles pop. Sam was trembling. It was one of those full body tremors like a low vibration in glass that was only the precursor to an eventual and violent shattering.

Dean twisted a little so he could reach across Sam with his other arm and tug him forward. Sam resisted at first, but Dean was persistent and kept up a firm pressure at the back of Sam’s neck that he eventually folded under, resting his head on Dean’s shoulder and still keeping his hands locked around Dean’s and tucked up close to his chest.

“Sam, I promised you a good girly come-apart,” Dean teased gently. “So, if you need to, it’s fine. Really fine. I…can understand.”

Sam gave it his best effort. He really did. Dean could feel the strain through the twitching muscles of his neck and shoulders where he held him and that little bit of resistance he was still trying to put up, either to pull back from Dean or to keep from giving into the sobs punching at his ribcage for release. He folded over further, hunching around the turbulence gaining ground in his chest like he could keep it contained or hold it captive inside himself, but in the end he didn’t have the strength. He turned his face into Dean’s neck.

“I can’t.” Sam’s voice was a ruined whisper. It was cracked, battered, and crumbling like a dam under the pressure of a thousand angry rivers. “I just…can’t. Dean!”

Suddenly, Dean’s arms were full of Sam and it was like trying to keep hold of an earthquake. Everything that had been building up over the last hour since they’d talked to the doctor, over the last day and a half since Dean had bloodied up the kitchen sink, over the last weeks since Dean had slowly started to deteriorate in front of Sam; it all came shaking and shuddering out of his huge frame, requiring every ounce of Dean’s depleted strength to hold onto him.

“Sam, it’s—,” Dean stopped himself. He was going to say it was ‘okay.’ That it would be okay. They would make it okay. It was there job. They made everything okay in the end. Hell, they’d stopped the end of the world. They’d trapped Death—albeit just for a few minutes. They could do something about this, too. 

Only they couldn’t. 

Dean pulled Sam in closer, bent his neck to kiss the back of Sam’s head. “Sam—.”

“Don’t talk, Dean,” Sam choked out. “Just don’t say it.”

“I was only—.”

“No!” Sam sat straight up. “No. You cannot say this is okay, and you cannot make it better, and you _cannot make it go away!_ ” Sam grabbed the collar of Dean’s shirt in one hand and gave him a stiff shake. “Jesus fucking Mary, Dean! You’re dying!”

Dean jerked back at the bald statement. The doctor had said it an hour ago, just not in so many words, Dean had been thinking about all the way home, but not it those terms. To hear the words come naked out of Sam’s mouth like that stung him, shocked him. He stared at Sam like he was someone he’d never seen before, gears in his brain all jammed up and stripping at the idea of Dean Winchester’s time on this green earth being well and truly over. 

He’d been to Hell. He’d died so many times he put those kilt wearing Hollywood highland fucks to absolute shame. He’d even been legitimately shot with a damn sawed-off, gone to Heaven, and been brought back to life. What the hell gave Mother Nature, or genetics, or whatever-the-fuck a right to kill _him_? He was Dean Winchester, damn it! The man God had apparently hand picked a posse of angels to rattle the gates of Hell to retrieve because he had a purpose on this earth. He was _not_ dying. Not now. Not ever.

Of course that wasn’t true, and it was pretty pompous of him, and he knew it. Really he did. But still…how fair was it to have lived through a life like his, come out the other end, and then have this happen?

Sam wasn’t in a mood to let him contemplate it much more at the moment, though. 

Sam’s mouth was suddenly all over Dean’s, hot and demanding, almost punishing, like Sam needed to take out his anger at the universe for threatening his brother on someone; and Dean was as good a target as any especially since he had drug his feet so badly doing anything about the situation whether or not any earlier action on his part could have delayed the inevitable. Sam released Dean’s hand, only to lock his huge paws at the sides of Dean’s head, holding him absolutely immobile while he continued to ravage Dean’s mouth. 

 Dean could taste the hot salty tears still running down Sam’s face, but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t pull away. If this would help Sam get a handle on what was happening, then Dean would take it, every bit of it, without complaint. He didn’t resist when Sam shoved him backward to sprawl across the bed, face twisted in a pained grimace above him before he set on Dean’s already swollen lips again with a renewed vengeance. Sam’s hand went to Dean’s crotch where his body was willingly responding to this erotic violence in the only way it knew how. Dean groaned heavily against Sam’s mouth. Sam didn’t respond directly, just jerked hard at the snap of Dean’s jeans and drove his hand in and downward, cupping Dean’s already straining cock in his landmass of a palm and squeezing hard. 

Dean gasped at the pain/pleasure of the contact and reciprocated by opening the front of Sam’s jeans in one smooth motion and circling his cock in a death grip. Sam snarled and bit down on Dean’s bottom lip until it bruised. 

“What do you want, Sammy, huh?” Dean whispered all silken against Sam’s mouth. “What’s gonna make my baby boy feel better?”

Dean could feel the leap in Sam’s pulse at his words. He knew just how to hit the right cord with his little brother. Sam loved the sound of Dean’s voice. He’d loved the sound of it singing him out of tune lullabies when he was little and still slept in a crib, he’d loved it soothing him at night when they spooned up together in some giant hotel bed while John was off hunting god-knew-what-god-knew-where, he loved the sound of it on the phone when he was at Stanford and Dean had snuck away to call him every Saturday night, and he loved the sound of it when Dean was making love to him, all soft and dirty and velvety sinful.

Dean pumped Sam a couple of times,  his strokes hard and dry and full of friction. Sam yanked his mouth away sucking in great lungfuls of air and thrusting into Dean’s fist like it was the last and only thing on earth he might ever do again; and suddenly Dean understood what this was about. He grabbed Sam’s jaw and jerked his face down so he could see into his eyes.

Sam’s hair was mussed and tossed over his brow, long lashes shading those hot hazel eyes, cheeks flushed and burning, but not just with desire. Dean saw the desperation as plain as he saw the tears still draining from the corners of Sam’s eyes even though Sam himself no longer seemed aware of them. This was a bid for life. Dean’s life. Sam needed to feel Dean warm and breathing in the deepest places of his soul, to know that he was still alive and still there with Sam. 

Dean decided to show him the best way he knew how. 

He rolled the two of them on the mattress. No mean feat with a brother built like a redwood and sharing all the same height characteristics. He pulled away from Sam’s lips and hands, raising up over him on his knees. He stared down at Sam for just a minute, trying to tell him without words that he understood what it was Sam really needed. Then he leaned over and tugged Sam’s t-shirt up over his head, tossed it away; grabbed the waistband of his jeans and boxers and stripped them off, tossed them after the shirt; leaving Sam naked under his gaze.

It had been a while since Dean had taken the time to really appreciate his brother’s physic. Sam had always been a beautiful specimen, wraith thin and adorably gangly through his teen years, lean and lanky in his early college days developing into lithe, and then a final growth spurt followed by Sam’s obsession with fitness brought him into his own where he became this living Adonis that lay on the worn navy blue comforter right now. Sam was all long beautiful carved muscle and pale, pale skin that was soft and dusted with fine dark hairs in all the right places. And his cock…well, that was a thing that would make angels weep and the likes of  Michelangelo beg to carve it.

Dean dragged his fingertips across Sam’s chest and down his belly, feathering them over his cock until it twitched and Sam moaned deep in his throat.

“Shh, baby boy,” Dean said. “Gonna give you everything you need. Promise.”

Dean backed off the bed and stripped out of his clothes, not with any particular rush and never taking his eyes off of Sam who was watching him with rapt attention and barely restrained need. When he was completely naked and had stood for a while at the side of the bed just admiring the feral beauty that was his brother, he leaned down and pushed Sam’s knees apart.

“Open for me, Sam,” Dean commanded softly. Sam obeyed, parting his thighs wide and lifting his heels to rest on the mattress. “That’s right, just like that,” Dean commended him. He knelt on the edge of the bed and skated his hands along Sam’s thighs, down over the tense, rock hard quads and then curving inward to the softer, more tender skin, at last framing Sam’s engorged flesh and swollen balls in the diamond of his fingertips and thumbs. He kneaded gently, tantalizingly, into the crook of Sam’s hip where the skin was softest while the tips of his thumbs pressed back teasingly toward Sam’s clenching ass.

Sam whimpered a little, shifting his hips eagerly. Dean smiled and pressed his thumbs further back, spreading Sam just the littlest bit, teasing that tight ring of muscle with the very tips of his thumbs. 

“That what you want, Sam? Want me there?” Dean asked, watching Sam’s cheeks flush an even deeper shade of red. “Tell me. Tell me how you want it, baby boy. Have to hear you say it.”

Sam’s eyes shot wide open and he stared into Dean’s, mouth working around the gasps and moans stuck in his throat as Dean pressed his thumbs up and into Sam’s tight heat, just a little, just to test him. Finally he managed to croak out,

“Want you, Dean. Want you inside me. So bad.”

Dean nodded slowly, pulled away for just long enough to snap open a bottle of lube and then returned his thumbs to the job of delving up inside Sam’s hot ass. Sam, for his part, grabbed the underside of his thighs and rolled himself up to give Dean easier access. Dean murmured his approval.

“Jesus, Sammy. So beautiful. Nothing like you anywhere,” Dean praised, pushing his thumbs up and inside Sam, both together, taking the hiss of pain/pleasure that passed Sam’s lips into himself and letting it fuel his own desire. He pushed further in. “Tight, baby boy. So tight, and so hot. Can’t wait to push my cock up there, feel you squeezing all around me. Fill you up till you can’t take anymore.”

Dean let out a low gasp as his own words acted on him like a heady drug and he imagined the look on Sam’s face as he thrust up into him with the first long, slow stroke. 

“Now, Dean. Please, now!” Sam begged, writhing under Dean’s hands, trying to find a way to fuck himself more thoroughly on the short digits. 

“Uh-uh. Not just yet,” Dean said, pulling back. Sam growled in frustration. Dean kneaded the backs of Sam’s thighs, pushing them wider apart, sliding forward between them, taunting his brother with the closeness of his own heavy, dripping cock. “Gotta give attention where attention is due,” Dean admonished, bending low over Sam and laving a long, wet strip up his cock where it curved against his trembling belly.

He kept his hands on Sam’s thighs, kept them apart, but went to work suckling at Sam’s swollen head. He took the soft, velvety head into his mouth and sucked sweet and long, licking the slit delicately and working his tongue all around it, tasting the little jets of cum that Sam couldn’t control any longer with relish.

“Dean…please…” Sam’s voice was broken, ruined and rough with wanton passion. 

“All right, Sammy. Promised I would give you what you need, didn’t I?”

Sam nodded vigorously. 

Dean rolled Sam’s hips a little further up and let his hands drift down to cup Sam’s beautiful ass, spreading him apart so he had a clear view of that  pretty, puckered, pink ring. Dean was throbbing, dripping onto the comforter, wanting to be in Sam as much as Sam wanted to take him.

“Gonna do it, baby boy. Gonna give it all to you,” Dean whispered, and he pressed his swollen head up against Sam’s tight hole and sucked in a sharp, shattering breath as Sam yielded to him, opening right up and taking him in, so tight, so hot. “Jesus, Sam. You. Are. Fucking. Amazing.”

Sam groaned some guttural response and wiggled impatiently, trying to force himself down Dean’s engorged shaft. Dean put a hand on Sam’s belly.

“Whoa, Sam. Whoa. Slow down, baby boy. Can’t do this too fast.”

“Just—.” Sam dropped his thighs and lifted up with his hips, then jerked himself forward and thrust down on Dean.

Dean lost his grip, his balance, and almost lost his control as Sam reached up and grabbed at this ribcage to haul him in even tighter. He set the pace from there, thrusting hard and strong, spearing himself violently on Dean’s cock, so that Dean almost gasped in pain at the tight, jerking pull of Sam’s insides. 

“Fuck, Sam!”

“Yes!” Sam snarled. “Fuck me, Dean. Do it!”

Dean shook his head to clear it, to try and ground himself enough to meet Sam’s punishing pace, to be the one to take Sam to the precipice first and throw him over headlong and screaming with pleasure. But it became quickly apparent that it was Sam who was going to control this fall from grace. He slammed into Dean, body sheening with sweat at his efforts, hands grappling to hold onto Dean, keep him closer than close and locked into his rhythm. All Dean could do was hang on for the ride. He held himself over Sam with one arm braced beside his shoulder while he used the other to pump Sam’s throbbing cock, fingers slick and sticky with cum.

“Dean!” Sam cried out at the top of a thrust, and Dean felt the tensing jerk of his belly contracting against the backs of his knuckles. It was Sam’s tell, the one that said he’d taken all he could and his orgasm was mere seconds away.

Dean leaned in close, lifted his gaze to look up at Sam from beneath his feathery lashes and smiled wickedly. “Do it, Sammy. Do it. Cum all over me. I want it, just like I want to fill you up, gush inside you, ‘till you can’t hold anymore.”

Sam’s shoulders jerked back into the mattress, raising his hips that last inch, and he screamed from somewhere deep, far back along the evolutionary chain of their more animal ancestors, and obeyed his brother’s demands. Dean felt Sam squeezing all around him, rippling and shivering and full body quaking as he came, and it drove Dean right up and over the edge into the blinding staticky white of release.


	3. Trying To Find Acceptance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean both take it in.

Dean woke the next morning to an empty bed and the smell of bacon wafting down the hall from the kitchen. He breathed deep without thinking and was met with the acrid taste of nausea creeping up the back of his throat. He sat up, flinching at the sharp pain in his stomach.

“Shit.” He hunched on the edge of the bed for a minute, waiting for the pain to abate and then got up more slowly and made his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash off from his and Sam’s exertions last night. He was a little tender and just slightly raw from the brutal session of coitus. He and Sam had done rough before, but never quite like that. Sam had moved like a man possessed, bringing all his strength and passion to bear with pinpoint accuracy on Dean. Desperation had been driving him, and grief, and anger. 

Dean shook his head a little, pausing in running the damp washcloth over himself to recall the feral look in Sam’s eyes. He wondered if Sam even remembered much of what they’d done last night. He was so lost in his pain, so engulfed by it, Dean wondered if he might have drowned in it had they not syphoned it off with their love-making. 

He found a pair of sweatpants in the closet and pulled on a soft t-shirt and padded down the hallway barefoot. 

Sam was standing at the stove in his flannel sleep pants and a close fitting white tank that stretched over his corded back muscles as they moved and shifted with each of his practiced actions with the frying pan in front of him. 

“Not sure what’s hotter, Sam,” Dean said from the doorway. “You or that frying pan.”

Sam threw a smile over his shoulder and pushed the frying pan off the burner. “Me, of course.”

“I’ll say.” Dean grinned in agreement and moved into the kitchen to sit down at the island. “Last night was…something else.”

Sam hesitated with the spatula over the pan, brows pulling together. “I didn’t…hurt you, did I?”

“What? No! Sam, it was fine. You just—.” Dean looked up into Sam’s eyes and saw the shadow of what had been there last night still lurking. It only took Sam a heartbeat to recognize that Dean had seen it, prompting him to turn back to the stove and focus an inordinate amount of attention on pushing the scrambled eggs off onto plates. 

“I made your favorite. Bacon with a side of eggs,” Sam said with forced lightness.

Dean grimaced a little and put a tentative hand to his stomach as Sam turned around with the plates in hand. “Uh, Sam, much as I'd love to...I don’t think…”

Sam’s eyes widened momentarily and then he frowned in concern turning away quickly and putting the plates out of sight in the sink. “I’m sorry. I just thought…maybe you were still feeling well enough to want--.”

“I want it. Trust me. I really do, and it smells divine,” Dean said, because he wasn’t about to tell Sam that just the smell was enough to make him nauseous right now. “I just think I’d be pushing my luck. Seems whatever they pumped me full of is working its way out of my system. I’m really sorry. It was a nice thought, though.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I get it. I’ll make you some tea? Ginger? Maybe that’ll help.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Sam set to work heating water and finding tea bags. “I, uh, got a call from the hospital this morning. They gave me the info on hospice.”

“Sam--.”

“Dean, just… Hear me out, okay.” Sam backed up against the counter while the water heated in the electric teapot and held up his hands, palm out. “I already called them, and it’s not like we have to have someone here all the time. We can just get someone to come in one or twice a day. Maybe not even that. Maybe I can convince them that I can do the IV or whatever, and they can just bring the medication, but we have to do something, Dean. You can’t keep up like this.”

Dean scowled and leaned, arms crossed, on the counter. “Sam, I’m not spending the last weeks of my life drugged up—in a hospital or here.”

“Not drugged,” Sam said frantically, “not like that anyway. Maybe we can just get them to give you something so that you can eat, or at least something to take the edge off the pain?”

Dean shifted on his stool, working a hand around surreptitiously to press at another stabbing pain below his sternum. Whatever they had given him yesterday had dulled the pain significantly and he’d hardly felt nauseous at all. It was the best he’d felt in months, and maybe it would help him keep a better face on things. He hadn’t been too loopy after all, just a little sleepy, but that could be attributed to the pain and constant illness not letting him sleep very well just as well as to the medication. If he could keep a handle on the pain and maybe eat a little then Sam would feel better and for that, for Sam, Dean would try anything once. 

“All right, Sam. All right. We’ll try it…and see what happens, okay?”

Sam nodded once. “Good. Because they’ll be here in about thirty minutes.”

“Damn it, Sammy,” Dean pushed back from the counter.

“Dean, wait. C’mon. Just sit down for a few minutes and drink your tea,” Sam mollified, patting the air with his hands. He turned and poured hot water over the ginger tea bag when Dean grudgingly sank back down on his stool and set the hot, steaming mug in front of his brother. “Drink. Then we can get a shower.”

“We?”

“Sure,” Sam said with a mischievous smile. “We won’t both make it through in time if we take them separately.”

“Mm-hmm,” Dean hummed, looking over the edge of the mug at Sam as he sipped at the tea. “And that wasn’t by design.”

Sam just shrugged and speared a forkful of bacon and eggs from one of the plates in the sink and stuck it in his mouth. Dean shook his head and smiled. “Sit, doofus. You don’t have to eat on the sly just because I can’t.”

Sam looked a little reluctant. “But the smell…?”

“I’ll manage. Now, sit. We can’t both starve,” Dean commanded. 

Sam retrieved one of the plates and sat down across from Dean. He ate a few bites in silence, then started scooting his bacon around on the plate, set his fork down on the edge then picked it up again; all telltale signs that something was on his mind.

“Spill it, Sam,” Dean said.

Sam wiggled on his stool still fiddling with his fork. “I’ve been, uh, thinking.”

“When aren’t you?” Dean muttered into his mug.

Sam pulled a momentary bitch face to which Dean just smirked. “Seriously, Dean, I’ve been…thinking about our options.”

“Options?” Dean said cautiously, setting down his mug. “What ‘options’?

Sam pressed his palms flat on the counter. “The ‘keeping you alive/saving your life’ kind.”

“Sam.” Dean’s tone was warning, his eyes gone dark with the promise of a threat.

“J-just listen, Dean,” Sam said, carefully avoiding Dean’s full on glare. “I’m thinking that a cross-roads demon is out what with the Gates of Hell being sealed up good and tight, and Cas said that Heaven was on lock down the last time we saw him, so I kind of doubt we can expect anything from that quarter.”

“Sam—.”

“There’s always hoodoo, I suppose,” Sam rushed on, “but like you’re always saying, it’s just a Band-aide in most cases, hardly a cure. I’ve got some promising spell books in the library. I just need to do some more research, and there might be—.”

“Sam!” Dean slammed his fist on the countertop. Sam jumped.

Dean pushed back from the counter slow and deliberate. He kept his gaze away from Sam’s, afraid of what might come across if he looked. He stood up. “We are not exploring any ‘options’.”

“But—.”

“I said ‘no,’ Sam.” Dean turned away and went back down the hall to the bathroom.

Sam slumped against the counter, whole body shaking. It had been a while since he’d seen that look on Dean’s face, the one that promised pain if his opponent pushed any harder. Sam had only been on the receiving end of it a very few times, one of the first being after Metatron stabbed Dean to death and he came back with a demonic soul. The look had crept up to the surface now and again during the last days of their regular hunts when Dean was outnumbered, outgunned, or his life was under real threat in some other way, but he had always kept a good grip on it. 

To see it now made Sam’s adrenaline surge, but it wasn’t enough to make him have second thoughts about trying to find a way to save his brother. 

When Dr. Mead had given them the prognosis, Sam’s brain had gotten caught in a loop, and all he could think was how unfair it was that with everything they had survived to this point, how— _how_ —could his brother be taken from him by something so petty as a malignant tumor. It didn’t make any kind of sense to Sam, but he couldn’t claw his way past the injustice of it to start thinking about what he might be able to do to prevent it either, until last night. 

That little bit of bedroom violence had acted like a reset switch for Sam. He’d managed to empty out his mind as well as his body through that massive orgasm and when he’d regained consciousness in the gray hours before dawn, he knew exactly what he had to do.

He was a hunter. With all the shit he knew and had seen in his lifetime, there had to be something somewhere that would save Dean. There had to be. The cross-roads demon, even if it was possible, was probably not an option he would have considered except as a very last resort. He might have gotten farther with this conversation if he hadn’t led with that particular idea, but he wanted Dean to know that anything and everything was on the table right now, and he needed Dean’s help. He could cover a lot of territory alone, but the two of them together could do it a whole lot faster.

What he couldn’t really get his head around at the moment was why Dean was so opposed to the idea. 

Collectively, their deaths over the years could fill a cemetery. Consequently, death to the Winchester boys was not the final curtain. It was just a challenge to be overcome. Sam had never really considered what his last and final death would be like, in fact, somewhere in the back of his mind he might have come to believe the two of them were immortal and that was why Dean’s death now was not even an option. Something was going to reveal itself that could fix this and Sam was going to find it. The only thing that could stop him at this point would be time because they didn’t know just how much of that Dean had left.

 

Dean stood under the hot spray of the shower, hunched and arms braced against the cold tile. Apparently stress was a trigger to the stomach pain, probably what had led him to making the assumption about an ulcer in the first place. He wanted to throw up, but it wasn’t the cancer or the nausea from it that was the cause this time. This time it was the image of Sam lip locked with some skank-ass demon bitch in the dark of a backwater cross-roads, sealing a contract whose terms could be anything from the usual ten years to a special dispensation for the much desired Sam Winchester that meant immediate death and extradition to hell. Wouldn’t Lucifer just get a hard-on to know that his beloved Sam was back in the house.

Dean gagged a little, spit into the bottom of the shower, and forced his eyes open to the steam and sharp spray of water. He knew it was impossible. Castiel had promised that the Gates were closed. Hell was under permanent lock and key. At least until some other fated pair of brothers came along a few centuries down the road and picked the damn lock again. However, none of those facts made Dean feel any better about Sam having even thought of the idea as an option to save Dean. Just knowing the kid would go that far—and why he should think for second that he wouldn’t was beyond him—made his heart beat painfully. 

He had done this to his little brother. He had dragged him into this mess of a life, this dysfunctionally codependent relationship that they had. From way back Dean had been tugging, pulling, and  pushing Sam along beside all the time. Maybe… _maybe_ he wasn’t completely to blame. Ash had said, after all, that only the really special people, the soul mates who were bonded across time and space and all that shit, were the ones who got to spend their time in Heaven together which had to mean on some level that God had a hand in it. Right? 

It didn’t matter. Even if God had come down and handed him a contract in writing that said he and Sam were meant to be together in this life or any other, Dean would regret making Sam love him the way he did. He could have stopped that. He could have left it as some unrequited ache in both their hearts that neither of them could quite define. He could have left the kid at Stanford to live a normal life. Even if Jess had burned anyway and Sam had begged Dean to take him along so that he could get his revenge, he could have said ‘no’ then. He could have promised Sam he would find the sonofabitch who had killed his girl and then turned around and left Sam to mourn at her grave in safety, never knowing that he could fill that hole in his heart with someone else who came in the shape of his brother. 

Dean had truly crossed the line when he brought Sam back the first time. It was his own weakness that did it. It wasn’t out of regret that his little brother wouldn’t get to live his life. It wasn’t out of obligation or guilt or some irrational fear of retribution or reprisal from his father from beyond the grave that made him make that deal. It was pure and simple selfish need fueled by love that burned brighter than the sun. He couldn’t live without Sam. That’s all there was to it. 

When that realization solidified in Sam’s mind, that was all it took to fill in the final blanks that had always been there and shine the light into that dark corner of his heart where he didn’t often look because the pain was too much and see that it was Dean all along that could fill that space and make him a whole person. The deed was done then and there was no going back. 

After that it was just a continuous, repetitive cycle between them that compounded and intensified whatever bond they shared until neither of them could exist without the other. 

“Dean?”

Dean dropped his forehead against the cold tiles and took a shuddering breath to dispel the morbid thoughts spinning around in his head.

“Dean, can I… Can I come in?” Sam asked tentatively through a crack in the door.

“Yeah,” Dean said gruffly. He heard the door open and close softly, saw Sam’s silhouette standing on the other side of the frosted glass shower door, watched from the corner of his eye as he shed his t-shirt and pants into a heap on the floor and then stepped up to the door. 

Sam pulled the door back a sliver and asked quietly, “Mind if I…?”

Dean turned himself against the wall to rest his shoulders on the tile and reached for the door, sliding it back to give Sam plenty of room to step in and an open invitation that he couldn’t misconstrue. Sam ducked in quickly and closed the door to keep in the steam and heat. He moved under one of the two shower heads spraying from opposite sides of the space and let the hot water soak down his hair and run over his broad, muscled shoulders to cascade in patterned rivers over the rest of his body.

One of the first and only major renovations Dean had made to the bunker when they had it to themselves was the shower. It was fine before, but Dean loved his hot showers, and he figured he deserved a little luxury, so he’d busted down a wall, doubled the size, installed heated floor tiles and two shower heads, one of which he adjusted specifically for Sam’s incredible height so he never had to duck to wash his hair again. All his hard work had paid off many times over when he and Sam spent an inordinate amount of time under the hot spray nearly draining the hot water tank for the day. 

Sam pushed his wet hair back out of his eyes and wiped a hand over his face. He stood just watching Dean with that intensely earnest face he made just before he was about to apologize all over himself for something that may or may not be his fault but that he was willing to shoulder the burden of guilt for just so that it didn’t drive a wedge of silence between them for a day or week or however long it generally took Dean to get his head out of his ass.

Dean felt another twinge in his gut that had nothing to do with his illness and everything to do with the idea that this could be one of the last times he got to see Sam like this, all wet and naked and beautiful and so completely his. His Sam.

He started a little when Sam reached forward, brow creased in concern, and smoothed a thumb over Dean’s cheekbone where a tear had driveled from the middle of his eye. Just one, and leave it to Sam to not be deceived that it was just hot water runoff from the shower. He blinked and stepped forward, cupping Sam’s jaw in both his hands and looked up at him.

“Just promise me, you won’t do anything…stupid, Sam. Promise me.”

Sam swallowed back his own sudden rush of tears and gave a tiny nod. He wasn’t sure if that was Dean’s way of giving him permission to continue his research to find a way to save him, or just forbidding him to give into the grief and loneliness that was sure to swamp him when Dean was finally gone. 

Sam covered Dean’s hands for a moment, then pulled them down and held them tight against his lips.

Dean frowned. “I mean it, Sam. For real this time. You move on. You live happy. You make something of what we are.”

This time no amount of swallowing was going to hold back the tears, and Sam grabbed Dean to him, nearly suffocating him with the strength of his hold, and buried his face against Dean’s neck. He shuddered in Dean’s embrace, sobs coming up wracking and silent under the hiss of the water around them. Dean smoothed his hands over Sam’s shoulder’s and back, rubbing long, slow strokes.

“Hey…shhh…shhh. I’m sorry. Just…forget it for now. Okay? Don’t think about it right now.” He felt a derisive chuff of breath between sobs against his throat and smiled sourly. “Yeah, tall order, I know; but let’s just—just get through this one day at a time, huh?”

Sam shuddered again, and Dean felt him making the concentrated effort to steady his breathing. He kept making long strokes from Sam’s shoulders to his hips, over and over, until Sam finally raised his head enough to kiss Dean softly against his jaw and whisper,

“I love you, damn it. Love you so much it makes my whole body hurt when you talk like that. So, just…just don’t. Not right now. Okay?”

Dean closed his eyes, willing himself not to let loose on his own sobbing spree, and nodded against Sam’s cheek. Sam’s arms tightened around him momentarily and then he pulled away completely.

“Wash up,” Sam said, handing Dean the soap. “We’ve only got about ten minutes before the hospice nurse gets here.”

Dean sighed in resignation. “I can think of a lot better ways to spend ten minutes in the shower,” he grumbled. 

Sam smirked. “Not this time. Now, wash.”

Dean stuck his tongue out at Sam, and Sam proved that he didn’t need ten minutes. He only needed five.


	4. Unexpected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean find an unexpected friend. Sam airs some dirty laundry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am total shit at chapter titles, in case you haven't noticed yet.

The hospice nurse arrived promptly at eleven.

There was a somewhat hesitant knock on the iron door, and Dean answered it after sweeping his eyes over the cameras Sam had installed a few years back. 

“Hi, I’m, uh, Natalie Braer with St. John’s Hospice Care?” she said, stepping cautiously across the threshold, eyes darting to the etched Devil’s Traps on floor and ceiling.

“Just decoration,” Dean reassured her. “My…partner and I used to travel quite a bit and bring back eclectic pieces from the places we’d been.”

“Ah,” she nodded and came further into the room, stepping carefully out of the circle of the etched trap. Dean sighed inwardly in relief even though he knew consciously there were no more demons left to trap.

“Can I take your bag?” Dean asked, eyeing the heavy looking cooler case slung over the woman’s shoulder. 

She smiled her thanks but shook her head. “Controlled substances. Has to stay in my keeping.”

“Got it,” Dean said. He motioned her into the den. “This way.”

Sam came into the den from the other direction, still pushing slightly damp hair back out of his face. He offered his hand to Natalie. “Hi…?”

“Natalie Braer,” she supplied, now looking from one to the other of them in slight confusion. “I’m sorry. Do I have the right address? I’m here to look after a Dean Winchester?”

“Yeah,” Dean said quietly, sitting down in one of the leather wingback chairs. “That’d be me.”

“I’m Sam,” Sam said, taking Natalie’s hand. 

Natalie’s eyes went suddenly wide and her fingers spasmed around Sam’s broad palm. Dean leaned forward, instinctively picking up on the sudden increase in tension and the frown that creased Sam’s brow. 

“ _The_ Sam Winchester?” Natalie asked in a tiny voice. “The, uh, _hunter_ Sam Winchester?”

Sam threw a confused look of his own at Dean over Natalie’s shoulder. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Do we know each other?”

Natalie disentangled her hand and stepped back, her bag sliding to the ground. “Y-you helped my uncle, on a job, about ten years ago. Patrick McCann?”

Sam dredged his memory, reaching for a name and a face, but nothing came. “I’m sorry, Natalie. I don’t recall…?”

Dean was up now and hovering at Sam’s side, knowing that look in his eyes, the particular cant and tilt of the shadows as he fought to recall something that he would never be able to. Ten years ago, Sam was running around without a soul, and it was anybody’s best next guess if the experience this girl was talking about had turned out for the good or not. 

“It’s okay. We didn’t actually meet. My mom wouldn’t let me out of my room until you and my uncle and your family got rid of the…monster.” Her voice fell off on the last word, like she hadn’t said or thought it for a very long time. 

“Your uncle was a hunter?” Sam tried. 

“Yes. He’d run into something he couldn’t identify, and he called his contacts for help. That’s when you showed up.” She smiled. “I’m glad you did. You saved my uncle’s life.”

Sam sighed in relief, afraid that just the opposite may have been true. Dean put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Sam’s eyes slipped to the side for a moment to let Dean know he was okay and then he returned Natalie’s smile. “Glad I could help. It’s what I do…uh, did.”

Natalie seemed to come to her senses at Sam’s stuttered tense change. “Oh, I’m so sorry! This is incredibly unprofessional of me. I apologize. I really do. I just…never got the opportunity to thank you in person, and I think it’s amazing that somehow I ended up here so that I could. Thank you.”

Sam nodded. “You’re welcome. Can I get you anything before we get started, Natalie?”

“Thank you, no. I’m fine. Shall we?” She motioned for them to sit and Sam opted for the couch, tugging Dean inconspicuously after him. Dean followed, his hand skating down Sam’s arm from his shoulder and loosely linking their fingers. Natalie caught the gesture and smiled but said nothing as she sat down opposite them and flipped open the side pouch on her bag and pulled out a laptop. “This is going to be a lot of information that you already gave the hospital, but we need to recap to be sure we have it all correct, so bear with me, please.”

Dean settled in beside Sam, keeping hold of his hand, wondering if it was for Sam’s benefit or his own as his insides started to shiver and twitch with anxiety as the reality of this situation started sinking in. Sam seemed to sense this and twined their finger more completely together, nudging Dean’s knee gently with his own. 

Natalie flipped up the laptop and focused on the screen, then glanced at Dean with a curious smile. “Dean, I have to say, you’re not what I was expecting.” Dean raised an eyebrow. “I mean to say, most patients who are…terminal, are in a lot worse shape.”

Dean shrugged. “My dad’s motto was never let them see you bleed.”

“Ah. Well, please don’t let bravado color your answers to my questions,” Natalie said. “I need honest answers in order to do an accurate evaluation that will provide you what you need.”

Dean gritted his teeth a little, but acquiesced with a short nod. 

“Good, now…”

The next hour and half was a generally non invasive physical examination so Natalie could get a baseline of Dean’s vitals, and a long litany of questions that Dean did his best to answer honestly, letting Sam fill in some information when he stumbled and got stuck trying to get across an answer without revealing something that didn’t need light shed on it. Toward the end, though, Dean was really starting to hurt and it made him short tempered.

“Look. Natalie, I’m dying, okay?” he  snapped. “How much more information do you need to keep a dying man doped up through his final days?”

“Dean!” Sam said sharply, but Dean was already cursing himself for his inappropriate comment and then he doubled over with a groan. Sam grabbed his shoulders, slid sideways off the couch to his knees and helped Dean lay down on his side. “Dean? Hey, easy man. Take it easy. Breathe. You need something to drink? A trash can?”

Dean shook his head. He wasn’t about to throw up in front of a stranger, no matter how shitty he felt. Across from them, Natalie was moving efficiently, snapping on rubber gloves, peeling back the sterile plastic on  a needle and syringe and filling it from a bottle out of her bag. She flicked it once and then knelt down beside Sam. She gently pried Dean’s arm away from his midsection and easily located a vein and inserted the needle. 

“I apologize, Dean. I was hoping it wouldn’t have to go this far, but you are a stubborn man, apparently.” Sam almost bared his teeth at this remark, but Natalie continued quickly. “I told you I needed honesty. You were saying everything you thought I wanted to hear, but I needed to know how much you were really hurting. Now. How’s the pain? Scale of 1 to 10?”

“Eight?” Dean offered through clenched teeth.

“Nausea?”

“Yes,” he hissed, swallowing back on the acid trying to creep up his throat.

Natalie fished around in her bag for another bottle and gave Dean another injection. “That should start to help in a few minutes.” She peeled off her gloves and went back to kneel at her laptop, typing in a few notes. 

Sam turned to her. “Look, I’m sorry. He is stubborn, but you’ve got to understand…what we’ve been through in our lives…well, it makes us a little unique in circumstances dealing with normal pain and death.”

Natalie paused in her typing. “Yes, I suppose it would,” she said without looking up. “I also suppose that neither of you is keen on a live in nurse?”

Sam glanced at Dean and then back to Natalie. “No offense, but, no, not really.”

“None taken,” she assured. She closed the laptop again and looked squarely at Sam. “What I’m about to offer, could really get me in trouble, but you did my family a solid, and I’m prepared to return it. I can put in an IV port in Dean’s hand. All the medication can be administered through there. Keep it flushed, covered, and clean so he doesn’t get an infection. I can leave behind a few days worth of the drugs he’ll need and email you a schedule. You have to follow it _religiously_ , and I have to stop in every few days to at least check up on him. Agreed?”

Sam felt like flying across the table and hugging Natalie to him. “Yes! Yes, absolutely. Agreed.”

“Okay,” Natalie said, then muttered to herself, “I could so get fired for this.”

She opened her bag and started to rifle through it, mumbling to herself the whole time. Sam sat down cross-legged in the floor beside the couch and took Dean’s hand in his. 

“How ya doin’, Dean?” he asked softly. 

Dean cracked an eye, took an experimental breath, let it out slow and then nodded. “Better, I think. Fast acting stuff. Just…feel tired.”

“It’ll make you a little sleepy,” Natalie agreed. She stood up with an IV bag in her hand and a metal s-hook and a length of tubing. “Can I hang this from that…thing?”

She was pointing to a 2nd century iron Tibetan warding staff that was standing at the corner of the couch.

Sam barked a laugh and then shrugged his assent. “Sure. Why not?”

Natalie set the s-hook in one of the curlycue rings and hung the bag from it, attached the tubing and strung it down to Dean. She rummaged in her bag some more and came up with a significantly larger needle and an IV port.

“Okay, this might pinch a bit.” Sam moved out of her way and Natalie knelt down and expertly tapped out a vein on the back of Dean’s left hand and then inserted the port. Then she pulled down the tubing and attached it to the port, starting the flow of fluid. “There. Now, keep it wrapped when you’re not using it, and when you shower. Flush it a few times a day to keep it cleaned out and don’t let blood back up in it if you can, though it’s normal to see some.” She got up off her knees and hefted the bag. “The rest of this stuff needs to stay in regular refrigeration.”

“I’ll be right back, Dean. Just rest,” Sam said and unfolded himself from the floor and led Natalie to the kitchen where she could start off-loading the bottles of medication into the refrigerator.

“Natalie, can I ask,” Sam started hesitantly, “have you seen many cases like this?”

“Of cancer? Yes. Of this particular kind? A few, but not usually in someone so young,” she answered.

“I knew those burgers were going to do him in,” Sam muttered.

Natalie smiled. “The food he’s eaten doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it, actually. I’d be more worried about a heart attack if he wasn’t a healthy eater, but he seems to be in really good shape. I mean, considering…”

Sam nodded. “Our work was…demanding.” He paused and flattened his hands together in front of him, debating his next question. “So. Can you tell me…how long…at all?”

Natalie smiled again, gently, as if she was expecting this question. She put a hand on Sam’s arm. “I wish I could say for certain. Your brother seems surprisingly healthy for how advanced his illness is, and that’s promising. But there are so many variables…. He’s a fighter, and that’s good. Just don’t fight…too hard.” She sighed, biting her lip in frustration at Sam’s raised eyebrow. “I guess I mean just don’t not accept what’s happening? Know that it’s going to happen and focus your energy on making the best of what time you have left—however little or much. And don’t fill the days with some unfinished ‘bucket list,’ either. I’ve see that.” She shrugged. “It works for some people, I guess.”

She leaned forward so she could see Dean laying on the couch, still hooked to the IV and then looked back at Sam with a peculiar intensity in her eyes. “But not you two. You two…need to fill the days with each other.”

Sam swallowed hard. “We’ve been together all our lives.”

Natalie nodded. “I thought so. You’d mentioned a brother when you were with my uncle.”

Sam’s eyes shot wide in the realization of what he’d just given away. They were careful to not bandy about that they were brothers in case they slipped up in public, and they were careful to keep their physical relationship behind closed doors. But Sam had pretty much just spilled the beans.

“Hey, it’s fine by me,” Natalie said at Sam’s stricken look. “Love is love. However, wherever. Besides, it was pretty obvious he meant a lot to you then, more than most brothers would.”

“It was?” Sam was genuinely shocked. He couldn’t remember talking to anyone about Dean during that year, and he was surprised that he had, and a little worried about what he’d said.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” Natalie squinted at him.

“There was something…wrong with me…for quite a while that year, and it prevented me from remembering anything about where I was, or what I was doing,” Sam explained. “I’m honestly surprised you said I talked about him. I…don’t know why I drug him back into all this. He was doing exactly what I’d told him to. He was happy. He had a family. Then I dropped in out of nowhere and ruined it all.”

Sam’s voice had risen to an edgy panic. He fisted his hands at his sides, trying to batten down the hatches on his hammering heart and the hundred memories that were pouring in on him along with a thousand emotions, mostly riddled with guilt over how many times and how much he had wronged Dean over the course of their lives.

“Hey, hey, It’s okay, Sam. Just relax.” Natalie was guiding him to a chair, forcing him to sit down, rubbing a loose circle between his shoulder blades and prompting him to breathe. “I can’t imagine you ruined anything,” she said sincerely. “Looking at the two of you together? I’ve honestly never seen anyone happier.”

“But what made me do it?” Sam asked desperately. Like a dog with a bone, he just couldn’t let it go. “Of all the times in my life that I should have been able to walk away, to just let him go, it was then. Why couldn’t I just leave him in peace!”

“Sammy?”

Dean’s alarmed query from the next room brought Sam’s head around sharply. He was out of his chair and kneeling by Dean’s side in seconds. “Dean? You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sam. But I heard you—.” Dean stopped, frowned and reached his free hand to brush at Sam’s cheek. “Hey, what’s this?” He struggled to try and sit up as Sam wiped at his own cheek, only just realizing he was crying. “Sam, what’s going on?”

Sam put his hands on Dean’s shoulders, gently pushing him back into the cushions. “It’s fine. It’s really okay.” He brushed his lips across Dean’s knuckles. “I promise. I just had a chick-flick moment, okay?”

Dean wasn’t satisfied, but he sank back into the pillows and then watched as Sam tugged the ottoman close and sat down, never letting go of Dean’s hand. 

Natalie came back in the room. She stood a few feet off, hands folded meekly in front of her. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean to—.”

“It’s okay, Natalie. Really,” Sam assured her before she could get any further. She shrugged uncomfortably and then held out a card.

“Here’s my contact information. Call me if you need anything. Anything at all, short of immediate medical care, then call an ambulance. I’ve emailed you the schedule and dosages for the medications, and a food plan if Dean feels like he can eat anything at all.” She turned to Dean. “You need to try and eat. You probably won’t be hungry, but the human body can’t subsist without food no matter how many calories and nutrients we pump into your blood, okay?” 

Dean nodded. “Thanks. I’m sure Sam’ll make sure of it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he will.” Natalie smiled. “You’ve got a real special one there, Dean.”

Sam’s breath hitched, Dean raised a sharp eyebrow, and Natalie swore quietly.

“I think I should go before I really overstep myself,” she muttered and shouldered her bag. “I’ll be back the day after tomorrow to check on you and restock your supplies.”

Sam stood up and saw Natalie to the door. As he pulled it open for her, she turned back to him. “Remember what I said, Sam, huh?”

Then she hitched her bag close and dashed to her car.

Sam closed the door and bolted it and turned back to Dean who had maneuvered himself into a sitting position and was glaring across the room. 

“So, what’s going on, Sam, that’s got strangers making you burst into tears?” Dean’s tone was rough, what most would take as him itching for an argument, but Sam knew better. He could hear the fear and worry underpinning the gruffness. He sat down on the couch beside Dean and after a few seconds consideration, he tilted to the side and put his head on Dean’s thigh.

“What…?” Dean scowled, but draped his arms around Sam’s back and shoulders. “You’re starting to scare me, man. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. She said something and it reminded me of…” Sam tucked his face a little closer into the warmth of Dean’s denim clad thigh. “When I found you, that year I didn’t have a soul, what did I say to you that convinced you to come back with me?”

“What the hell, Sam? Are we going to rehash this now?” Dean asked irritably. “What does it matter?”

“Please,” Sam said quietly. “Please, just tell me what I said.”

“I don’t know, Sam. You quoted me a whole bunch of stuff I probably should have known already. About how Lisa and Ben would never really be safe. About how I was wrong to keep them on lockdown just so I could sleep better at night. How that would make me no better than dad.”

Sam nodded and remained silent.

“Sam. C’mon. What’s this really about?”

Sam’s hand tightened on Dean’s. He took a deep breath. “Are you sure I didn’t set those Djinn onto you, Dean?”

“Jesus Christ, Sammy…”

Sam sat up, eyes wet again. “Think about it, Dean! You lived with Lisa and Ben for a whole year without a whisper of anything supernatural. Then I suddenly show up and save you from a Djinn? What kind of sense does that make? Why would they have waited so long to come after you? Why would they really have even _wanted_ to come after you?”

“Maybe it just took ‘em a while to find me…I don’t know! Sam! It doesn’t matter. None of that matters right now. Why are you even thinking about it?”

“Because it’s my fault, Dean!” Sam shot off the couch and paced across to the hearth, arms wrapped tightly around himself. “Don’t you see. Even without a soul, I was so needy that I had to have you with me. I chased you down and stole you back. I ruined your life!”

Dean started to get off the couch and got tangled in the IV tubing. “Damn it.” He glanced at the bag. It was nearly empty. He tried to work the feed loose from the port, but couldn’t figure out how the thing worked. He held his hand out. “Get this damn thing loose, Sam. Now.”

Sam shook his head and edged further away. Dean started to pull on the port, and Sam dived for his hand, pinching the tube and disconnecting it. “Damn it, you could blow out a vein, Dean.”

“I’ll blow something’,” Dean said, not waiting for Sam to wrap his hand, he grabbed him and hauled him in close, startling Sam into stillness. “If you don’t quit thinking about this shit. It’s done, Sam. I don’t regret it. Not one little bit. None of it. You hear me? You didn’t ruin my life, and I don’t care why or how you got me back. If I didn’t want to go—.” He pulled Sam’s chin up. “If I didn’t love you more than anyone or anything anywhere, I wouldn’t have gone with you.”

Sam shuddered and collapsed against Dean’s chest. Dean stroked his hair, his shoulders, down his back. “Besides. If you _did_ set those Djinn on me just to try and get me to come back to you? Then, Sam, that says something about just how strong your soul really is.”

“What?” Sam’s muffled confusion came up from Dean’s shoulder.

“I think that even though you didn’t have your soul…your soul had _you_ ,” Dean said. “Even if it was just an echo getting through the cracks. It took you to the one place it knew you’d find the help you needed. It brought you back to me. That just proves we’re supposed to be together. Soul mates and all that shit.”

Sam pulled out of Dean’s shoulder and looked up, brow creased in disbelief. Dean was grinning down at him. 

“I didn’t think you believed in any of that stuff.”

“Who the hell knows, Sammy? Huh?” Dean ruffled his hair gently. “All I know is that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

Sam dropped forward into Dean’s arms again and they laid back on the couch together. Dean sifted his fingers through Sam’s hair and traced the curve of his ear with his thumb. Sam huddled against Dean’s chest and played with the buttons on the front of his shirt. 

“So, what was it she wanted you to remember?” Dean finally asked after several minutes in the quiet.

“She said something about forgetting the ‘bucket list.’ That we should just…be together.”

“Ah. Well, did she have any suggestions on _how_ we should be together?” Dean asked, sliding his hand down Sam’s spine and under the waistband of his jeans. 

“Don’t you ever think of anything else?” Sam sighed, snugging his thighs closer around Dean’s despite his words.

“Hey, I’m a guy. What’d you expect?”

Sam nuzzled into Dean’s neck, letting out a breathy laugh. “I’m a guy, too, Dean, and I don’t think about it nearly as much as you.”

“Well, then,” Dean said in his darkest velvet voice. “I guess I’ll just need to remedy that, won’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess you will.”

Sam stretched out against Dean and met his lips gently. Dean angled his mouth and tasted Sam with the tip of his tongue. All of Sam’s muscles were quivering, and Dean could feel the quick pound of Sam’s heart against his own ribs. The rhythm wasn’t fueled by desire, though. He felt guilt and desperation tripping in a syncopated counterpoint, and he hated it. He wanted to wash Sam clean of all that. He didn’t want to die with those stains coloring all the rest of Sam’s life. 

He took his brother’s face in his hands and lifted him away a little, looked into his eyes. Sam met his gaze for the space of a few breaths but couldn’t stand the intensity and let his eyes skitter to the side. Dean tightened his hold and forced his focus back to center.

“Sam. Listen to me. Let this go. Please. I don’t want this between us.”

Sam tried to pull away, but Dean held him fast. “Dean—.”

“I mean it, Sam. I don’t want this time to be any different than any other between us.”

“But it is different, Dean. Don’t you get it? We had all the time in the world a few days ago, and now—.”

“There’s a stopwatch hanging over our heads?” Dean finished. He lifted Sam’s face a little and kissed him solidly. “I don’t care. It changes nothing.”

“Dean, it changes everything—.”

“No. No, it doesn’t. We’re going to keep going, Sam. Just like we always have. We’re going to keep living every day the same as the last. Just you and me.” He kissed him again a little more tenderly. “And we’re going to start by making love right here. Right now.”

“Dean…” Sam tried to shake his head, to refuse Dean’s advances, but his brother was persistent, and if Sam Winchester had a weakness it was anything having to do with Dean.

Dean skated his hands down to Sam’s hips, then down to wrap around the backs of his thighs and tug him upward so that he was spread eagle across Dean’s thighs and tucked firmly against his growing erection. Dean shifted and rolled his hips. Just a smooth easy movement, something to coax and cajole, not necessarily ignite with desire. 

Sam pressed upward, so he could look down at Dean, take in the hard set of his jaw, the crows feet that crinkled at the corners of his eyes whenever he smiled—and, God, how Sam loved to see him smile. He bent forward and licked lightly at the corner of Dean’s mouth, eliciting a smooth, rumbling chuckle, then he pulled back and—there it was—that smile that could crack open the gray skies of heaven and bring back the sun singlehandedly. He brought a finger up to trace the curve of Dean’s lips.

“Love that,” he whispered.

Dean turned into his palm and nuzzled it, planting and kiss there. “Know you do, baby boy.”

Sam melted at the endearment and gave a little moan. He scooped his pelvis forward and brought his own hard shaft flush with Dean’s, rolled his hips downward, increasing the pressure until Dean’s breath hitched and his back arched a little off the cushions. Sam worked his hands under Dean’s butt and lifted, bringing them even closer.

Dean dug his fingers deep into Sam’s hamstrings, lifting upward, grinding them together. He freed one hand and brought it around to try and undo the front of Sam’s pants, but Sam caught his wrist hard.

“No. Not like that. Just like… _this_ ,” Sam whispered against Dean’s hand before he replaced it on the back of his thigh. “Do you remember? Our first time? On the couch in that hotel outside Mason when Dad was gone for nearly a week hunting the Banshee. You’d been sick with a bad cold, and I couldn’t get you warm…so I laid on top of you on that old threadbare couch.”

Dean’s eyes shifted a little, focusing back into memory, pulling up that hazy morning when it seemed the world outside had disappeared into the thick fog that blanketed the little valley town. He’d woken up all sweaty and hot and covered in Sam with his morning wood wedged right into the dip of Sam’s hip joint. He’d tried to stay still, to assess what was going on and why his baby brother was stretched out all over him, but Sam had moved in his sleep, moaning softly and rolling his hips forward. 

Just like he was doing now.

“Yeah, I remember that, Sam. You were so freaked, but you couldn’t stop either,” Dean said.

“Uh-huh. I buried my face in your neck. I was blushing so hard,” Sam agreed and mimed the action but opened his mouth and licked at Dean’s throat, then latched on and sucked lightly.

“You didn’t have a clue what you were doin’, but you did it all so well.” Dean tipped his head back, exposing more of his neck. 

“I was terrified,” Sam murmured.

“I know. So was I.”

Sam rocked his hips and gasped at the sharp friction of denim on denim as he slid himself over Dean’s hard length. “I remember thinking, ‘This is wrong! So wrong!’ but also, ‘How could something that wrong feel this damn good.’” Sam pressed his nose up under Dean’s ear, breathed warm air over his skin, listened to his pulse skipping and skidding at the feeling of ‘now’ and the memory of ‘then.’

Dean arched up against Sam’s thigh, pressing tighter, harder together. “You were so fresh, so real. You just _wanted_. Without any pretense, and it made you so fucking perfect, Sammy.”

Dean grasped the sides of Sam’s head and pulled him away slightly, enough to rub his thumbs across the twin patches of hot color high on his cheeks. “Baby boy still blushes…” he murmured.

Sam tried, unsuccessfully, to duck away. “You never—you never really said after that, if you liked it or not.”

“Jesus, Sammy!” Dean shook him a little. “Of course, I liked it. I mean—look at us!”

“Yeah, but it was your first time. It should have been…I dunnno…special, or something.”

“Christ, Sam. It was you,” Dean lifted up to kiss Sam’s mouth long and tender and deep. “That was all the special I needed.”

Sam let out a long pent up breath and began again on the slow grinding rhythm that he had momentarily forgotten. Dean let out a low,  satisfied hiss. 

“Forgot how good this feels, Sammy. Just this. Makin’ out like a couple of clumsy teenagers, just like we did then. Terrified Dad was gonna stumble in and find us, or hear us in the middle of the night. Doin’ the bump and grind every chance we got.”

“God, Dean…” Sam blushed harder at Dean’s choice of words and the cheshire grin that was spread across his face. He moved again, memories of all those secret nights crashing in on him. All the times Dean had left marks in his shoulder, drawn blood, in an effort to contain his screams as he rutted against him in the heavy dark of the motel room not six feet from John’s bed. All the times Sam nearly choked himself biting down on shabby motel pillows to silence the mewling cries that Dean drove out of him as he fisted him or sucked him under the sheets.

“Dean…” Sam’s voice was low and loaded with need. Dean lifted to it, took Sam’s mouth with his own, plunged his tongue deep and swept out the inside of his mouth, warring Sam’s tongue for dominance behind his teeth. He plunged in again and again, hips locking into the same dance, Sam picking up the tempo and undulating above him like some primal sex god from the dawn of time.

“Do it for me, Sammy. Just like then. Not even gonna touch you,” Dean whispered against his mouth. “But you’re gonna come for me. Come for me so hard.”

Sam gasped, jerked back from the kiss, throwing his head and shoulders back, sucking in air, hips plunging downward, driving for more. Dean met him, thrusting up, groaning loud and long and watching Sam tremble and then shatter apart at the guttural sound. He punched his hips upward one last time and Sam let go a stunted, gulping shout as he came, sticky wet cum blossoming dark across the front of his jeans. Dean followed him over, coming on the downstroke, fingers digging hard into Sam’s hipbones, Sam collapsing all boneless and spent onto his chest.

They lay there together gasping and clinging to each other, shuddering wight force of their orgasms and the hundreds that had come before, in secret places in the dark spread across thousands of miles of asphalt and memory. 

Dean pushed Sam’s hair out of his face, smoothed it back and pressed his cheek to Sam’s forehead. “Every one, Sam, every time. Every bit as good as the first. Don’t you ever forget it.”

Sam sighed contentedly and pressed his lips to Dean’s collarbone. “I won’t. Not ever.”


	5. Down Hill From Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has to face that this is the beginning of the end. Or does he?

The next three weeks went smoothly. The two of them settled into a different kind of routine together that incorporated Dean’s sessions of medication and the occasional IV bag on a rough day, and a regular eating schedule with a pretty strict menu that seemed to help at least a little, though Dean still professed to never really being hungry. Natalie visited every other day and then every two days, keeping record of Dean’s condition, though neither brother really saw the point given the inevitable eventual outcome.

Sam discovered Dean had a heretofore unknown penchant for Jack Kerouac, Niche, and Douglas Adams. He also enjoyed Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings. So they spent long afternoons in the library curled around each other while Sam read aloud to Dean, often while they waited for his most recent round of medicine to work its way through his system.

Dean discovered Sam had a thing for Asian cinema. So, a lot of evenings were spent in the den with Sam’s laptop propped across their thighs watching subtitled melodramas that centered around sex, or violence, or a ridiculous dedication to duty, or all three. Dean’s eyes would inevitably start to droop half way through the movie, and he would end up with his head tucked into Sam’s shoulder snoring lightly, or folded over onto his lap where Sam would card his fingers softly through Dean’s hair the rest of the movie, not really hearing or seeing anything on the screen as his attention was focused entirely on the feel of Dean’s soft, resilient hair gliding between his fingers and how this night could possibly be the last time he got to enjoy it. 

The movie would end and Sam would coax a sleepy Dean up and back to the bedroom where he would undress him and tuck him in and then, depending on how Dean had felt that day, tuck up close and spoon him until they both drifted off, or he would slowly and tenderly kiss Dean all the way awake and they would spend the next hour or so tangled in each other’s limbs making love, sometimes frantically, sometimes slow and hot and sweetly. 

They spent the days easily, not keeping to any particular schedule besides Dean’s injections, and didn’t make plans beyond which flavor protein drink Dean wanted with any given meal. Dean insisted that they not be completely lazy, so they spent a few hours every afternoon in the library translating texts. Sam would handwrite the translations, as he found it easier to focus with a pen in his hand that he could write with while never really taking his eyes from the book he was working on, and then Dean would take Sam’s slanted scrawl and transcribe it into the laptop.

This all worked really well until Dean hit a three day stretch near the end of the fourth week that he couldn’t eat anything, his pain levels got so bad he almost couldn’t sit up, and then on the third day he started vomiting blood again. 

Sam wanted to take him to the hospital, but Dean convinced him to call Natalie first. She came straight over, dosed Dean with a different medication, raised the dosage levels on his pain and nausea medication and gave Sam a new regime that included a lot more supplemental nutrients fed through the IV. 

“Sam, we’re getting close,” Natalie said, pulling Sam aside after she had settled Dean and gotten him hooked up to the IV again. Sam’s face tightened, his eyes darting to Dean stretched out and pale on their bed. Dean hadn’t even complained when Sam suggested he just stay in bed this morning, near the bathroom, and more comfortable than he would be on the couch in the den or in the library. Dean’s lack of stubborn insistence that he at least get out of bed had sent a cold wash of terror through Sam more potent that any had felt in his lifetime even in the face of monsters, demons, or Lucifer himself.

Natalie put a hand on his arm. “If there is anything that needs…attention, any arrangements that need to be made…you should do it now.

“I’d like to come by again tomorrow and probably the next day as well. Depending on how he’s doing we might be able to go back to every other day again, but I’m not going to lie to you at this point, Sam. Things are starting to go downhill.”

Sam had known it was coming. The idea had settled in his mind thirty-six hours ago that this may be the beginning of the end. He’d prepared himself, he thought. But to hear Natalie actually say the words out loud was like a physical punch to the gut, and it must have showed on his face. The next thing he knew Natalie had a cup of cool water at his lips and was steadying him at the elbow.

Sam sipped at the water, not even attempting to take hold of the cup, knowing that his hands were shaking too badly. He swallowed, felt the acid heat of bile at the back of his throat, swallowed again, gave it up and spun toward the bathroom where he retched into the sink until his stomach cramped and his back hurt.

Natalie stood at his side, rubbing circles under his shoulder blades, until he could fumble the faucet on to rinse his mouth and splash water on his face and finally stand up again.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’ve seen worse,” Natalie assured him. “A lot worse. It’s a more normal reaction than you might think.” Sam raised an eyebrow. “People always think they’ve prepared for the worst, especially when they have a good idea of what the worst is going to be, but in the end it takes everyone by surprise.”

“Yeah, I guess. This just isn’t—isn’t how it was supposed to end!” Sam swiped at his eyes.

“You’re not alone in feeling that way, Sam--.”

“No! You don’t understand. After everything we’ve done. All that we’ve had to go through. This isn’t fair!” Sam stalked across the bedroom, stopping at the bed, looking down at Dean’s body, curled slightly in on itself in the memory of earlier pain, sweat still drying on his brow front he efforts he’d made to keep it under control so Sam didn’t know how bad it really was. Sam’s fingers flexed against his thighs, itching to tear into something, to do damage, to find the power responsible for this miscarriage of justice and beat the shit out of it.

Natalie waited patiently, having seen this reaction many times before.

“I’m going to do something about this,” Sam muttered. “No matter what he says, I can’t let it end like this.”

“Sam, there isn’t anything you can--.”

Sam whirled around. “I am going to do something to fix this.”

Natalie gasped in a breath and bit her lip against a squeak of fear at the burning look of determination in Sam’s dark eyes that were a few shades too far from sanity for her liking. But there was only so much she could do. She wasn’t a psychiatrist after all, and though Sam had helped her family out years before, that didn’t make them friends and didn’t give her the right to tell him he shouldn’t waste his time looking for a fix for death. 

She said nothing more, checked Dean’s vitals one last time and the IV, and then went back to the den to gather up the rest of her gear. Sam was standing behind her when she turned.

“I’m sorry, Natalie. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me.” She shouldered her bag and met his eyes to let him know she really meant it. “I just don’t want to see you…waste your time, I guess.”

“It won’t be a waste of time,” he promised, voice calm again. “I don’t expect you to believe or understand. But it won’t be.”

Natalie just nodded and turned for the door. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me if you need me.”

 

 _Dean_ …

Dean blinked against the glaring sunlight and shaded his eyes. When the whiteout had cleared, Dean could see a wide stretch of gray-blue water in front of him, feel it lapping coolly at his toes and hear it against the wooden pylons of the dock on which he sat.  

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean turned sharply. “Cas?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t—.” Dean gaped for half a second and then threw himself at Cas, nearly toppling both of them into the water. “I don’t believe it’s you.”

Castiel was surprised by Dean’s energetic reaction to him, pleasantly so, but surprised none the less and it took him a moment to reciprocate Dean’s tight embrace.

“It’s good to see you, Cas,” Dean said, voice muffled from where his face was buried in the collar of Castiel’s trench coat.

Castiel sank into the hug, having missed this physical contact more than he realized. “It’s good to see you, too, my friend.”

Dean pulled back a little. “I didn’t think you could…you know…manifest yourself or whatever anymore. The doors to Heaven being shut and all.”

“That is true. But as you near our plane, it has made it possible for me to communicate with you this way.”

“Near your—.” Dean jerked backward, looking around. He and Castiel were sitting on a dock, late afternoon sun pouring down golden through the branches of the forest surrounding the lake whose surface rolled gently in the breeze. They both had their pants legs rolled up and were swinging their feet in the water. “Hold up. I’m not…dead?”

“No,” Castiel assured him quickly. “This is just a dream. A very nice one, too.”

“Thanks,” Dean said absently, “But you said, ‘nearer your plane.’ What’s that mean?”

Castiel looked steadily at Dean, a remnant of human sadness lurking at the corners of his eyes. “I think you know the answer, Dean.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was afraid of that.” Dean nodded slowly and looked out over the water. "So, what are you doing here, Cas?"

"I missed you," Castiel said simply. 

Dean gave a half smile, eyebrow rising in flattered consideration. "I didn't think Angels could do that."

Castiel gave him a stern look. "You know that's not true. Not where you and I are concerned."

Dean laughed softly. "Careful, Cas. Sam'll get jealous." He frowned suddenly. "How is Sam? He's okay, isn't he? I mean, I'm not that far gone—not in a coma or anything—am I?"

"No. You're just sleeping. For now."

"That doesn't sound particularly good. What is it you're actually doing here, Cas? I mean, I appreciate you can't live without my ugly mug, but what's going on? Something like this," he gestured around them, "must take a lot of juice, even for you."

Castiel didn't say anything for a long time. He bent forward and brushed his fingers agains the surface of the water, creating ripples that carried out past where Dean could track them. He waited, gnawing at the inside of his cheek, knowing that Castiel wouldn't talk until he was ready.

"How are you and Sam, Dean?"

Dean scowled. "We're fine. We're good. Better than we've ever been probably. Why?"

Castiel continued to stir his fingers in the water. The sun was starting to go down. "Do you know what he does every night?"

Dean blushed a little despite himself. "Yeah, I've got a pretty good idea."

Castiel tilted his head in that way he had of silently telling Dean he was being dense and missing the very obvious. "That is not what I'm referring to."

"Ah. Then I guess...no?"

"He watches you sleep, Dean." Castiel finally turned to him, and Dean felt that old Cas-seeing-to-the-bottom-of-his-soul sensation crawl across his shoulders. Castiel saw his unease and put a hand on his knee. "He watches for hours, and then when he's too tired to keep his eyes open, he falls asleep...praying."

"Praying?" Dean said incredulously. 

"Yes. Every night."

Dean shook his head like he might be able to settle the realization into his brain in the right spot so that he could wrap his head around it. Sam knew as well as Dean that God was not in his Heaven, and even if he was, he wasn't answering any prayers right now. Neither were the Angels. "Why? For what?"

"For you."

Dean gaped. Castiel moved his hand to rest on Dean's shoulder. Imitating the physical contact that used to come so easily to him. “He has faith, Dean.”

Dean was speechless. He opened and closed his mouth a few times in search of some weak litany that couldn’t come close to doing the kind of devotion Sam had justice, but he felt like a heel if he didn’t at least try.

“What is there left for him to have faith in?” Dean finally asked.

Castiel squinted at him, gave him that tiny smile of disbelief that there couldn’t actually be someone out there with less understanding than Castiel himself. “You, Dean. He has faith in you.”

Dean took that in, nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah of course he does. That makes sense. I’ve got faith in him, too. Always have.” Not strictly true, but they’d promised to let the past be the past. Except that Sam had been digging an awful lot of it up lately.

Castiel shook his head like he would at a mis-comprehending child. “You need to be careful how you use that faith.”

“What?”

“Be careful what you drive him to do with it.”

Dean lifted his brows. “Nobody makes Sam do anything. Least of all me.”

Castiel released Dean’s shoulder and looked back out over the water. “Don’t be so sure of that, Dean.”

“Cas, what are you talking’ about? You’re not making any sense.” Dean pressed his hand to his head. “And you’re makin’ my head hurt.”

Castiel looked around as if he were evaluating their surroundings. He reached up and touched Dean’s temple with two fingers and then absently brushed them back through his hair. “The connection is breaking.”

“You mean…you gotta go?”

“Soon, yes.”

Dean took hold of Castiel’s shoulders and turned him fully to face him. “You didn’t come all this way just to shoot the breeze, Cas. Tell me what you have to say.”

Castiel pressed his lips together, tilted his head, brow furrowing in that way it always used to when he struggled to make human language stretch to fit his ideas. “You do not have the patent on self-sacrifice, Dean. Remember that. Remember the reasons you stole Sam’s soul back from Heaven, and know that when you did, you took the place of God in his heart.” Dean swallowed thickly and opened his mouth to protest, but Castiel put up hand. “I don’t have much longer. It wasn’t a stretch, Dean. All the ground work was there already. You stepping in and bring him back was just the final step. There are consequences to taking on that kind of responsibility for a single soul. And they have not all been paid.”

A sudden stiff wind whipped across the lake, forcing Dean to close his eyes for a moment. There was the rustle of wings and feathers at the edge of his hearing and when he opened them again, Castiel was gone and Dean was alone on the dock with the lapping water as the sun sank away into a pale cradle of blue and purple. 

 

_“Dean…?”_

Dean opened his eyes to Sam’s face mere inches away. He jolted a little, shocked out of his dream state and floating in that space between where it was a little difficult to remember in which world he actually belonged. Sam’s face was a wash of relief.

“Hey,” Dean said, tongue thick and dry in his mouth.

“Hey, yourself,” Sam said, leaning back and lifting a bottle of water into view. He helped Dean shift up on the pillows and held it to his lips while he took a few swallows. “How’re you feeling?

“Good. I guess.” Dean took a minute to evaluate himself, noting that he didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to throw up and there were no sharp stomach pains and the rest of his body was just one over all slight ache which was a tremendous downgrade from before he’d fallen asleep. “Yeah. Better. Definitely.”

Sam let out a long slow breath like he’d been holding it all day. “Glad to hear it. Whatever Natalie gave you must be working.”

Dean looked up under his lashes, not quite meeting Sam’s eyes. “Had to up the dose, huh?”

Sam nodded reluctantly because of what the answer meant, and they both knew it. “Yeah. Quite a bit.”

“Yeah.”

Sam sat back and rubbed his hands on the tops of his thighs. “I suppose it’s a stupid question, but do you feel like anything? To eat? Drink? Or—.”

“I dreamed of Cas.”

Sam stilled, eyes going wide. “Cas? Wow. Was it just a dream, or was it really, you know…him?”

“It was really him.”

“Wow.” Sam shook his head, still goggle eyed.

Dean scratched at the IV port on his hand, eyed the empty bag above his head, and wordlessly held it out to Sam to disconnect. Sam gently detached the port and then rubbed some lotion into the dry skin before rewrapping it. 

“That must have taken a lot of power to—to talk to you,” Sam said. He continued to hold Dean’s bandaged hand, tracing up one side of each finger and then back down, circling his thumb absently against Dean’s palm. “I didn’t think it was even possible anymore.”

Dean’s watched Sam’s long, strong fingers tracing against his knuckles, felt the same shivery spark up his spine that made his arm hairs stand on end anytime Sam touched him anywhere. “Yeah, it did. He said it was because…because I was so close already.”

Sam’s breath hitched and Dean heard him swallow audibly. He cut Sam a sidelong look and saw the quick swipe he made at the tear that slipped from the corner of his eye. “Sam…”

Sam lifted his chin and smiled. It was watery, but it was a good effort. He flattened his palms above and below Dean’s hand and held it for a moment in that gentle vice. “It’s okay. I’m good. So…lunch. I’m starving. I’ll fix us something and then maybe you feel up to coming out to the library or something?”

Dean nodded and watched Sam get up and walk away and wondered briefly that he hadn’t asked what Castiel had said. Not that Dean could remember. It was still a dream after all, and he’d gotten out of the habit of that kind of communication over the years of silence between he and Castiel. 

It nagged at him, though, like the angel had said something pretty damned important that Dean was not meant to have forgotten.

 

Sam braced himself on the long, flat, hard surface of the ‘war room’ conference table. They didn’t come in here much anymore. Lot of bad memories, and just other memories that they didn’t really need to face every day. He closed his eyes a moment, screwed down his courage, and then pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Garth?” 

“Sam! My god, how the hell are you?” Garth’s voice came across the line.

“Not doing too bad,” Sam said noncommittally.

“It’s been…wow, a real long time, Sam. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“You too, Garth.” Sam paused, trying to find a way to ask what he needed to, trying to recall if he even had a right to the favor it was going to take.

“Sam,” Garth said indulgently. “What do you need?”

“I know it’s been…awhile, and I really don’t have any business asking, and we’ve both been out of the hunt, but—.”

“Sam, spill it ya idjit,” Garth said affectionately.

The old endearment stabbed at Sam. He should hang up. He didn’t have the right to do this, not to Garth, and not to Dean. He was being selfish. He squeezed the phone in his fist until the plastic nearly creaked. 

“Sam?”

“I need you to hunt something down for me, Garth.”

“We got a case? After all this time? Wow.”

“No, not a case,” Sam said. “I just need—I need you to find something for me.”

“What is it, Sam? What’s going on?” Garth’s voice got deep when it finally warmed up to serious. Sam could almost hear Bobby’s voice there, too, the one that knew what he was going to do, was going to try and talk him out of it, but knew he wasn’t going to listen either.

Sam told Garth what it was he needed to find.

“What! You can’t be serious. How’m I supposed to do that? Do you even know where to start looking?” Garth paused for breath. “What am I saying? I can’t do this. Sam, why would you even want to find one?!”

“I can’t explain that right now. You just need to trust me. Please.”

Garth stayed silent for a long minute, and Sam was about to whisper an apology and tell him he never should have asked, when Garth said,

“It’s Dean, isn’t it?”

Sam froze.

“Sam, something’s happened to Dean, hasn’t it.”

“Yeah.” Sam breathed the word, afraid saying anything too loud would bring the tenuous reality he’d been clinging to inside these concrete and iron walls the past few weeks down around his ears. “He’s…dying, Garth.”

“Jesus…” There was silence, the sound of Garth sniffing and probably wiping the back of his hand under his nose then,“Sam, I’m sorry. So sorry.”

“That’s why I need you to find this thing for me, Garth. It’s—it’s all I can think to do,” Sam said a little desperately. 

“What is it you think you’re _going_ to do?” 

Sam sketched out his idea, leaving out a few vital pieces of information that even Bobby would have objected to, probably by locking Sam up and throwing away the key. He heard Garth considering on the other end. 

“Is that even possible? And what makes you think you can get it to agree, even saying I can find one?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can, but I’ve got to try. Please. Help me?”

Garth sighed, long and loud. “All right. Yes. Yes, I’ll see what I can do. I’m, ah, assuming time is of the essence?”

Sam swallowed hard. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“Okay. Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll call you.”

“Thank you, Garth. I can’t—I can’t repay you for this,” Sam said, voice breaking a little.

“You know you don’t have to. Idjit.”

The line went dead.


	6. Point and Counterpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean tells Sammy he needs to get out and away from the dead guy in the bunker (Funny, Dean. Really) Sam gets out more laundry.

Dean forced himself to be satisfied with washing off at the sink, not trusting his legs to hold him up long enough to take a full shower. He gagged his way through brushing his teeth and winced at the scrapping feel of the brush against his overly sensitive teeth. Jesus, this sucked. 

By the time he had his jeans tugged on and sweatshirt pulled over his head, he felt like he’d run a decathlon. He braced himself on his knees on the edge of the bed and tried to catch his breath.

“Dean?” Sam was filling the door, looking like a harried thundercloud. “What are you doing up? I was going to feed you something first you idiot. It’s a wonder you haven’t fall on your face!”

“Just a little worn out, Sammy.”

“Worn out? Dean, you haven’t eaten in three days. Jesus. It’s a miracle you can even stand like that.”

“Not doing such a hot job with that, actually,” Dean admitted with a sheepish smile. Sam was at his side instantly, slowly helping him up, getting his arm around Dean’s chest and moving with him down the hall to the kitchen.

“I’ve got some soup on. Think you can handle a little?” Dean made a noncommittal sound. “Just the broth, maybe, to start, huh?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Kitchen? Den? Library? Where do you want?”

Dean tilted his head toward the library. Sam steered them in and settled Dean into one of the overstuffed chairs they’d invested in a few years back because Dean had insisted that the place made him feel like he was back in grade school and made his head hurt with all the formal desks and hard, straight back chairs.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Sam said. 

Sam brought in an array of food on a large tray a few minutes later: bowls of soup, apple sauce, pudding, and the ubiquitous protein drink for Dean. He settled it between them on the table and handed Dean a bowl.

Dean’s hand shook, and Sam took the bowl back, sliding forward until he was on his knees in front of him. He cupped his hands around Dean’s, sandwiching them against the warm bowl and helped him lift it to his lips. 

Dean took a few tentative sips and then a decent swallow. Sam set the bowl back on the tray.

“Damn, I’m a mess,” Dean said.

Sam picked up his own bowl and tucked into it like a man half starved. Dean watched him quizzically, suddenly noticing how pale and thin Sam was looking lately. Worry started its incessant gnawing. “Dude, just because I’m stuck on liquid mush doesn’t mean you can’t have a decent meal. You need a steak, Sammy. You’re skin and bones.”

“I’m fine,” Sam insisted, trading out bowls and helping Dean take another few mouthfuls of broth.

“Shit, this is embarrassing,” Dean groused. 

“Like that time you got walking pneumonia and were in bed for a week?”

“Oh, you would bring that up.” Dean pulled a sour face and Sam laughed.

“Dad didn’t know what to do with you,” Sam mused. “He was always so good with me when I was sick, but you…it was like you’d grown a second head or something.”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded a little wistful. “Guess I was just never sick that much, so he was kinda lost. But you did a pretty bang up job filling in.”

Sam almost blushed, eyes darting away. “Yeah, bringing you lukewarm soup straight out of the can and rubbery jello?”

Dean laughed. “You were like, what? Seven? You did good. Really.”

Sam inhaled the rest of his soup and started in on a pudding cup. He paused with the spoon half way to his mouth, eyes losing focus. “I remember the night your fever spiked. I’d fallen asleep in the bed with you, even though Dad didn’t want me so close to you. I was afraid you were going to stop breathing because you were wheezing so badly. I woke up to you mumbling in the night.” Sam looked over at Dean. “You called my name.”

“I remember.”

“I was so scared.” Sam forgot about the pudding in his hands, staring back into the memory of that night. “You were burning hot and Dad hadn’t come back yet, and I couldn’t get you to wake up.”

“You put damp towels all over me. Kept changing them out every few minutes when they started to get warm,” Dean said. “Smart little shit for seven years old.”

“Yeah, well…” Sam picked up Dean’s bowl again, helped steady him while he took a few more swallows.

“Yeah, well, nothin’.” Dean pushed the bowl away gently, but caught at Sam’s hand. “You were great. You’ve always been great. So smart. Always had an answer to everything. Used to piss me off to no end—you and your smart mouth. But the thing was…you were always right.”

“Not always,” Sam said quietly, looking away.

Dean took the half empty bowl in a less than steady hand and set it on the tray. He pulled at Sam’s arm. Sam scooted forward between Dean’s knees, still avoiding looking at him. Dean lifted his chin with a finger. “You made choices, Sam. The best ones you could make, and no, they didn’t all turn out quite the way we expected, but doesn’t mean they were wrong.”

Dean leaned forward and kissed Sam gently on the lips, brushing his thumbs over Sam’s sharp cheekbones and that broad, prominent jaw that had cut itself from the soft, a baby faced college kid Dean had stolen from Stanford sixteen years ago. He pulled back a little, taking in the deeper hollows of Sam’s cheeks, the dark purply smudges under his eyes, the way his shoulders didn’t quite fill out his shirts like they had a few weeks ago.

Dean ran his hands through Sam’s hair, took a firm hold on either side of his head to let him know he meant business. “Sam, you need to get out of here.”

“Wh-what?” Sam stared.

“You need a break.”

“A break?” Sam blinked in disbelief. “A break from what?”

Dean sat back, swung a loose arm around to encompass the room. “This place. Me. Everything.”

Sam rolled back on his heels, face graduating in levels from stunned to hurt to angry. “Take a break. What am I going to do, Dean? Go on a cruise while you sit here and die?”

Sam swore viscously the second the words passed his lips, but Dean didn’t even flinch.

“Yes. That’s exactly what you should do.”

Sam pushed off the floor and back into his chair, shaking his head like Dean might have lost his mind. “Sorry, the bank account can’t support that.”

“True,” Dean conceded. “A cruise probably is a bit of a stretch. You never really liked water all that much anyway.”

“Not since those sprites dumped me in that damn frozen lake. Not so much, no.”

“Movie and pizza then. Couple of beers,” Dean said.

Sam looked at him skeptically. “You feel like pizza? And beer? You can’t even stay awake through a movie anymore.”

“Not me, Sammy. Take…Natalie. Show her a good time for putting up with the grumpy, sick bastard.”

“Dean…”

“Sammy, I’m serious,” Dean said.

Sam stared at him, all pretense of joking falling away. His eyes overflowed hurt. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you are.”

He pushed out of the chair and left the room.

“Damn it,” Dean swore. He untangled himself from the blanket Sam had draped around him and got up to follow his brother.

Sam was back in the kitchen, arms braced against the sink. Dean couldn’t tell if he was crying. “Sam…”

Sam whirled around. “Don’t. Just—.” Sam scrubbed at his face then shoved his hands into his hair and raked them backward. “You know what, Dean? We really need to talk about this.”

“No, Sam, we don’t,” Dean said. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Nothing to talk about?” Sam said incredulously. “Damn it, Dean. Why do you always have to stick your head in the sand over stuff like this?”

“I do not stick my head in the sand.”

“Yeah?” Sam spun away to lean on the counter again. He felt sick. Their time was running out, so fast that he swore he could hear the grains hissing through the glass. “You did it with Dad. You did it with Bobby. You did it with me--.”

“I did not do it with you.”

“You didn’t deal with it, Dean. You never deal with it!”

“I brought you back,” Dean said, voice graveled with something—Sam couldn’t be sure if it was grief or fury. “I’d call that dealing.”

“No, Dean. That wasn’t dealing. That was you taking control, you fixing what shouldn’t have been fixed. If you had dealt with it, you’d have let me stay dead.”

The words came out in a rush, unchecked, and Sam could almost hear the crackle and pop they made as they charged the air between the two of them.

Dean blinked. “Is that what you really wish, Sam? That I had let you die?” Dean’s voice was barely audible, broken and faded from the shock of Sam’s confession.

“Yes!” Sam shouted. “Yes, because then I would never have been around to cause you all the trouble and grief and suffering that I have. I wouldn’t have been there to become Lucifer’s bitch, or start the apocalypse, or go on a soulless rampage for over a year.” Tears were streaming down Sam’s face now. “I wouldn’t have been here for you to have to clean up after and look after every minute of every day, and you could have had a life of your own. You’d be with Lisa and Ben now. Alive and happy with something to live for so you’d try—at least fucking _try_!”

Dean could have walked. He usually would. He would get angry and belligerent, somehow twisting everything back around on Sam—and Sam would just take it like the martyr he was—and then Dean would storm off to brood in silence for days.

But to have Sam standing in front of him, slumped against the counter, crying, declaring it would have been better for Dean if he had just died all those years ago, was too much. Dean was no fool. He knew Sam carried around a crap ton of stuff in his head that he could feel guilty about the same as Dean did, but he was a whole lot better at dealing with it, at forgiving himself for it eventually. He just apparently hadn’t ever forgiven himself for living.

Dean leaned forward, arms resting on the table. “Sam, do you think, for even a second, that if you weren’t here, I would be either?”

“No…” Sam breathed.

“Don’t act so surprised, Sammy.” Dean caught Sam’s gaze and held it. “If I hadn’t been able to bring you back then—or any time after for that matter—I would have found a long stretch of road with a sharp curve and a long drop at the end.”

Sam shook his head in stark denial of Dean’s words. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re stronger than that—.”

“No, Sam.” Dean pinched at the bridge of his nose. “See. That’s the thing. That’s what you always believed. You always looked up to me because you thought I was the stronger one. But…I’m not. I never was.

“I didn’t bring you back for you, Sam. I brought you back for me, because I couldn’t stand to be alone. There would have been no point. There is no me without you. I meant that when I said it, in every sense of the words. So, for all the shit you’ve ever put me through…I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything in this world.”

Sam just stared at him for a long minute and then a hopeless little smile tugged at his lips. “And you don’t think the same is true for me?”

Dean wasn’t particularly stunned by the admission. He’d been expecting it, even if for no other reason than Sam’s emotions were strung high and stretched thin right now. Right now, he probably wasn’t even sure he could make it to the next minute much less the next phase of his life that didn’t include his big brother.

“No, Sam, I don’t. I know _you_ think so,” Dean said quickly before Sam could interrupt. “But you’ve got so much potential Sam, and so much more you could do with yourself. You got out once. If it hadn’t been for me, you would have stayed out. And, no, don’t go denying it. You could have lived a normal happy life. 

“I didn’t have the option, Sam. I gave myself to this life body, heart, and soul. There was never any saving me from the dark road I went down, and we both know the real truth about that. It wasn’t Mom’s death, or Dad’s obsession, or even needing to keep you safe that drove me. It was myself, pure and simple. I was more born to the darkness than even you were, Sammy. It’s why I never could quit even when I thought I wanted to.”

Sam’s mouth worked like he wanted to say something but the words were getting stuck in his throat. Dean did a quick, soft drum roll on the table top and gave Sam a smile. It was sad and a little worn at the edges because even Dean Winchester couldn’t pretend everything was all right all the time.

“So, here’s me talking about it, Sam, since that’s what you want so bad.” Dean sucked in a breath. “I always thought I was going to die from some hex or curse or at the sharp end of some monster’s claws and fangs, covered in blood, and damned for all the pain and suffering and death that’s followed in my wake all of my life. But I’m not. I’m going to die quietly—with you, maybe some night while I sleep, after we’ve made love—of an innocuous and very human thing like cancer. And really, Sam? I’m okay with that. It’s better than anything I ever thought I deserved.”

Dean raised his eyes reluctantly, waiting for the vehement refusals and objections that were sure to come, but Sam just stood, butt up against the counter, hands gone slack at his sides, eyes big and blank in shock.

Dean waited another pair of heartbeats and then pushed up from the table, steadied himself, and turned around to head into the den. He heard a sharply indrawn breath behind him and then the rattle of a short circuited sob. He kept walking and ended his journey on the couch where the makeshift Tibetan warding staff IV stand and Sam’s menagerie of supplies were neatly laid out for the evening round of Dean’s medicine and liquid nutrients since the few mouthfuls of soup he’d managed earlier hardly constituted adequate nutrition. 

Eventually he heard Sam rouse himself from the corner of the kitchen counter and come silently into the  room. Sam pulled the ottoman close to the couch and sat down, squirting a liberal amount of de-sanitizer into his palm and rubbing it in vigorously before he peeled back the plastic on a fresh syringe and sucked up the required dose of the first in a long series of medications all labeled with meticulous care on the tray at his knee. Then he waited patiently without speaking or meeting Dean’s eye as Dean unwrapped his left hand and laid it out on the arm of the couch for Sam to do the injections.

The whole process took about twenty minutes from start to finish and then another twenty or thirty for the the IV bag to empty. A couple of the injections made Dean’s skin itch and burn a little, but Sam rubbed an analgesic cooling gel very gently around the ridge made by the IV port and then wrapped it loosely to deter Dean from scratching or rubbing at it.

When Sam had hooked up the bag and made sure the lines weren’t crimped or twisted, Dean slid down the couch and laid back on the pillows. Since he hadn’t been able to eat at all the last few days, his energy levels were sagging pretty badly and even though he hated giving in to it, he had to admit he was tired. Sam sat on the ottoman and picked up the empty syringe and bottle of medication and other bits of stuff from this evening routine they had so easily fallen into, and set it all aside to dispose of, but he didn’t move to get up. He just sat staring down at his hands, pressing the pads of his fingers together in that nervous way he got on the rare occasion when he really didn’t know if or how he wanted to say something to Dean.

Dean cracked an eye, reached out and put a hand on his knee, prompting him to look up. He patted Sam’s knee then and pointed toward the narrow space on the couch beside him.

Sam sighed in barely disguised relief and stretched himself out all along Dean’s side on the couch, careful not to jostle the arm with the IV. Dean shifted in toward the back cushions to make more room for him and curved his arm around Sam’s shoulders. They laid together in silence for a while until Sam turned his face further into Dean’s chest and whispered, 

“If we were normal—if we had mom and dad still, or brothers and sisters, or a kid or something—and we were a _real_ family, would it make any difference?”

Dean didn’t answer at first, and Sam thought he might have drifted off to sleep, but then he felt Dean’s chest rise in a preparatory breath.

“We are a _real_ family, Sam. Maybe not the usual with 2.5 kids, a dog, house in the ‘burbs, and a slot on the local PTA; but we are _real._ There isn’t anything more real than the two of us.” 

Dean’s voice wore out at the end, and Sam felt a momentary pinch of guilt at making him talk when he was so obviously tired. He burrowed further into Dean’s side.

Dean sighed and lifted his hand to sift his fingers through Sam’s hair. “I know you want there to be something that would make me fight to hang on, Sammy. I know you want it to be you, and you can’t understand why you aren’t. But that’s not it.” Dean paused to take a breath, put a finger under Sam’s chin and forced it upward. “You’ve been enough all my life. Trust me. Every breath has always been for you. I just…I think it’s time, Sam. It’s time for me to let it all go. Can you please just be with me on this one? Please?”

Sam’s eyes welled up with tears, but he couldn’t bring himself to nod his consent. He gently pulled from Dean’s grip and reburied his face against the soft flannel of his shirt. He felt Dean’s heavy sigh through the rise and fall beneath his cheek and knew that his brother knew he wasn’t ready to accept that. 

Not yet.


	7. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean have sex. That's it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which I give my heartbroken readership some good, smutty, sex to lighten the mood since I suck so bad at comic relief.

Dean woke up to a numb arm and Sam’s rumbling purr of a snore vibrating through his body. He shifted his arm, trying not to catch on the IV tubing, and stroked Sam’s hair behind his ear. Sam had turned over in his sleep and was settled into his traditional little spoon position, arms tucked in, fists butting up under his chin. It was a position he’d slept in since infancy, counter to the intuitive sprawl that his height would normally demand.

“Heya, Sammy. Time to wake up,” Dean whispered. “We’re both gonna regret it if we stay here all night.”

Sam made a sleepy sound somewhere between a whine and a groan and arched his back a little. Whether he’d meant to shimmy his hips back into Dean’s groin on purpose was up for debate, but the motion combined with the half conscious sounds escaping Sam’s throat went straight to Dean’s cock. 

“Christ, Sam…” Dean shifted a little, trying to put himself more flush against the curve of Sam’s ass. “You’re pretty efficient at proving I’m not dead just yet.”

“Yeah,” Sam said on a breathy laugh. “Seems so.”

Dean groaned and caught at Sam’s hip, jerking him in close. “You did that on purpose.”

Sam shrugged. An innocent ripple of his shoulders that translated all the way down his back muscles to end with a little push backward against Dean’s thickening erection. Dean let his hand drift forward over Sam’s hipbone and push down into the pocket of his jeans, just brushing the long length of Sam’s arousal with the tips of his fingers.

“Tease,” Sam accused mildly.

“You know it.” Dean stuck his IV’d arm forward. “Make yourself useful.”

Sam twisted around enough to take hold of Dean’s hand and disengage the tubing from the port. Before he let go, though, he captured Dean’s index finger and sucked it deep into his mouth, curling his tongue around it. He kept a gentle hold with his teeth so Dean couldn’t pull back and worked the velvety softness of that strongest muscle up and down and back and forth against Dean’s finger, alternately flattening his tongue and stroking and then curling it to suck hard against the calloused skin.

“Fuck, Sam…” Dean’s breaths were coming quick and shallow, and he hooked a thumb under Sam’s waistband, tugging it away enough to fit his hand down the front of Sam’s jeans. He unceremoniously palmed Sam, tugging him backward with the same motion to nestle his ass more firmly over the stiff ridge of Dean’s growing arousal. Dean rutted against Sam a little, enjoying the friction and the tension of so many layers of cloth between them and complete satisfaction, riding the slow spiral of need upward.

Sam pulled off of Dean’s finger very, very slowly, tip of his tongue just flicking the pad as he finally release him. “You remember, Dean, doing this…at Bobby’s place late at night after he and Dad went to bed? Laying on the couch with the fire dying. You getting me off just whispering in my ear and palming me, your cock jabbing me in the ass like you were going to poke a hole through my jeans?”

Dean thrust up under the lower curve of Sam’s ass, holding it there, pushing hard against that solid muscle, letting the pain of hard brass and coarse denim against his sensitive flesh drive him back from the edge he found himself balancing on at Sam’s quiet admission. 

“Want me to whisper to you now, Sam? Tell you all the things I want to do to you?” Dean asked, leaning into Sam’s ear and tracing the upper curve with the tip of his tongue.

“Mmm. Yes. God, yes. Please, Dean.” Sam moaned his assent. 

Dean wiggled his hand further down the front of Sam’s pants, fingering his balls, curving his palm expertly around Sam’s thick cock. He hummed in approving satisfaction. “Baby boy’s gotten so _big_.”

“Guh…” Sam choked out, thrusting up into Dean’s palm and jamming his ass down against Dean’s swollen head. 

“That’s it Sammy,” Dean coaxed. “You remember those nights on the road, you cradled between my thighs in the backseat, leaning back into me, panting to the beat of ’Sweet Child of Mine’ with my hand down your pants makin’ you come so hard all over yourself?” Dean curled his fingers around Sam’s cock, stroking soft velvety skin over tempered steel. “Dad was in the front without a clue that his little boys were fucking each other blind in the back. You…you’d bite your lip ‘till it bled just to keep from screaming, and when that wasn’t enough, you’d bite into my hand.” Dean offered Sam the meaty part of his hand under his thumb, brushing it across Sam’s wet, parted lips. Sam latched on, sucking instead of biting, licking his tongue over the textured skin and hard callouses. 

“Taste so fucking good, Dean,” Sam mumbled around his mouthful.

“You remember the feel of my cock against your ass, rutting hard against you while you squeezed me with those gorgeous muscles?”

Sam pushed back against Dean again, flexing his ass.

“That’s it, Sam,” Dean breathed. “Shit. Yes. Just like that.”

The room was silent except for the punctuated gasps of Sam working to his climax against Dean’s warm palm and gripping fingers and the hoarse rasp of denim on denim as Dean worked himself to a sweat against Sam’s backside.

“Then there were the motels,” Sam gasped between nipping at Dean’s hand and sucking on it hard to stifle his cries. “Under the sheets, in the dark. Dad just across the way…always afraid he was going to wake up…catch us. Jesus! Dean!”

Sam was working himself up but good just remembering all the times they’d fucked each other in the dark, the risk of getting caught by John or Bobby or some stranger coming into the truck stop bathroom at the wrong moment when Dean had Sam slammed up against a stall door—when Sam was still short enough that Dean could lift him—and whining for release, head thrown back, hair all mussed and damp with sweat, throat working to swallow his screams of his brother’s name before they could escape, tendons stretched tight to tearing under the tension that risk of discovery put between them, compounding the desperate need knotting in their guts and groins.

Dean laughed, low and throaty. “Jesus, yes. Always made you so hot, living on the ragged edge, takin’ that risk that someone would find us out. Those were the days, huh, Sammy?” Dean withdrew his hand and Sam bit down in objection on Dean’s hand, moaning miserably at the loss of warmth and pressure. Dean unzipped Sam’s pants, pushing him forward just a little, and reaching to jerk the back of his waistband away from his skin.

“You remember when I introduced you to _this_ , Sammy?” Dean’s hand slithered down the back of Sam’s jeans and right between his flexing cheeks to press a finger against the tight round muscle buried deep in the warmth of Sam’s ass.

Sam jerked backward against Dean’s hand ramming himself up to Dean’s knuckle in one hard thrust. Dean heard his muffled scream against the cushions. He worked his finger in one slow inch at a time, feeling Sam flex and tug at him, listening to him beg wordlessly for more, and then finally finding his voice,

“More, Dean. God! Please, more!”

“Baby boy’s so impatient,” Dean whispered, worming his other arm underneath Sam so that he could get down the front of his pants again. Sam choked on a breath as Dean wrapped his cock with long, strong fingers and stroked at the same time he pushed the finger of his other hand deeper inside Sam. “I remember, Sam. The house in Ferring. Dad was gone for a week. It was the first time he’d left us on our own for so long and gone so far away, and you—you jumped my bones the second he’d turned the corner. Such an eager little thing,” Dean teased.

Sam whimpered and thrust forward into Dean’s fist, milking himself, while Dean fucked him thoroughly from behind with his finger. “Wanted you in me, Dean. God. Needed you so bad. Needed you to fill me up. Make me yours. You’d promised for so long…”

Dean sighed at the memory, how good he’d wanted to make it for his baby brother, fucking him mindless by candlelight or something silly and romantic that only Sam would be able to appreciate. But Sam had been so eager, all wet and close to coming before John had even got the Impala’s engine warmed. 

It had happened so fast. Sam throwing Dean to the floor and straddling him. Jerking his jeans open and fisting Dean to aching hardness in mere seconds, using his own precum to lube himself before he slid down on Dean, pushing through the pain until he had Dean all tight and pulsing inside him, buried to the hilt. Dean gasping and twitching under him, trying every trick he knew to keep his orgasm from coming. Sam sitting above him, head thrown back, hair all in his eyes and clinging to his brow, hands digging into Dean’s sides, hips rocking, lips contorted and moving in a complicated dance between pain and pleasure so acute he could hardly tell the difference. 

“Do it again, Sammy, just like that day…”

Sam moved so fast, Dean almost couldn’t follow it. He flipped his whole body, dragging Dean down flat on the cushions and shimmying out of his jeans in the same move. Dean still marveled at his kid brother’s agility. All that length and strength and power should be slow to move and ungainly, but Sam had always been spry and quick, graceful and nimble as a dancer in every move he made. 

Dean felt Sam’s hand around his cock, long finger’s engulfing him completely, stroking him to a level of hard that Dean couldn’t remember feeling since that afternoon twenty years ago. Sam rose above him, shirt mostly unbuttoned, sweat gleaming on his chest, hair tumbling around his ears and jaw as he rose and fell in time with his strokes until he couldn’t take it any longer. He straddled Dean, lifting up high, fisting himself and getting his fingers all wet with cum, swiping it back between his cheeks and then settling himself over Dean, holding there for just a breath.

“Jesus, Sam…so fucking beautiful. Always…” Dean whispered.

Sam came down in one sure, powerful stroke, his mouth thinned and his eyes squeezed tight at the shock and burn of Dean stretching him so entirely, and Dean’s hands went to his hips to control the push downward, but Sam would have none of it. He grabbed Dean’s hands and brought them flat against his belly, trapping them there to fell the flexing and contracting of his muscles as he sank down on Dean’s cock fully sheathing him.

“God, Dean, I…”

“Sam? Sammy? Don’t…gah!” Dean groaned as Sam flexed around him, squeezing unbelievable tight, almost painfully around Dean’s iron length. “Sam, slow down. Don’t. Move. I can’t… _fuck_!”

Dean jerked upward, the first throb of orgasm pushing his hips up and in, deeper and deeper into Sam’s tight heat. Sam thrust down in counterpoint, face still contorted in pain. Dean felt warm, sticky fluid on his belly and looked down to see Sam leaking steadily, more and more with every push downward against Dean’s cock. 

Sam couldn’t move. He was too dry and it hurt too much with Dean buried so deep inside him.  So he just sat and squeezed, rolling his hips forward and back, rotating them until Dean was gasping and clawing at Sam’s bare thighs. He felt the first throbs deep inside him and leaned forward to press his hand against Dean’s belly, feeling it clench and release in time with the throbbing until Dean curled full body off the cushions with the force of his ejaculation, and Sam felt warm wetness up inside him, dripping down and out of him. Dean pulsed and pulsed, filling him up until he couldn’t hold anymore, and the thought of his brother emptying himself out inside of him sent Sam crying over the edge. 

Every muscle in his body locked and he came in long, gushing jets of pearly cum all over Dean’s exposed belly and his t-shirt. He shuddered and trembled until he thought his bones would shatter and turn to powder and dust. He felt Dean’s hands on him, catching him, dragging him downward, holding him, soothing him while he sobbed and cried through the jarring aftershocks.

Seconds bled into minutes bled into the better part of an hour that they lay there, Sam draped over Dean’s chest, face tucked into his neck, arms looped under Dean’s shoulders and holding tight; while Dean stroked Sam’s back in a long slow rhythm and hummed to him under his breath—‘Hey Jude’—until Sam drifted into sleep with a murmured, ‘Love you. So much.’

Dean planted a kiss against Sam’s hair, breathing him in. “Love you, too, baby brother.”


	8. Knight To Queen's Level Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes his opening move after Garth find hims a pliable subject.

The call came at three in the morning. 

Sam’s phone vibrated against the nightstand and he slapped around until his fingers closed clumsily around it, lifting the too bright screen so he could try and focus on it.

_Garth_

Sam rolled carefully out of bed, thumbing the phone to life as he padded out into the hallway.

“Garth?”

“Sam. Sorry for the time.”

“No, it’s fine. ’S fine,” Sam said, rubbing at his eyes, and wrapping an arm around himself against the chill of the hall.

“I think I’ve got what you’re after. I’m headed your way. I can be there in six hours.”

“Okay,” Sam said slowly, trying to get his muzzy brain to think and translate what Garth was saying. “Okay. Don’t—don’t come to the bunker. I’ll meet you out at exit 34 on highway 6. There’s an old rest stop up there.”

“Sam,” Garth’s tone was warning. “Does Dean not know what you’ve got up your sleeve?”

Sam closed his eyes briefly. “No. You know he’d never agree to it.”

Garth was quiet a moment, then, “Idgits. I’ll see you at nine.”

Sam hung up and went back to the bedroom.

He crawled back under the covers and curved himself along Dean’s side. He lay there for a few minutes, trying to let sleep take him back down, but it wasn’t coming. He inched closer to Dean. Dean mumbled something in his sleep, snored softly and then rolled to his side. Sam molded himself up against Dean’s back and tugged him in close. He pressed his face into the back of Dean’s neck and flattened his palm over Dean’s beating heart. 

Dean lifted his hand and covered Sam’s, squeezing lightly.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Sam mumbled against Dean’s skin.

“’S fine. You okay?”

“Yeah. Go back to sleep.”

Dean shifted a little, canting his hips into a more comfortable position. Sam remolded himself against his brother’s back and unconsciously tightened his hold.

“Sure you’re okay, Sammy?”

Sam nodded. “Just. Lay still. Let me hold you.”

Dean settled more thoroughly into Sam’s embrace. Sam breathed in deeply and listened to the sound of Dean’s heart pumping under his hand. Even now, at the end of things when his body was deteriorating and weakening, his heart was still strong, still surging forward into the next moment. It would probably keep beating like that until the last moment, strong and steady, until it just…stopped.

Sam had always thought that Dean would outlast him. Whether it was Sam making one more lousy decision involving a fallen angel or a demon, or his mind finally breaking—because he was sure that Hell was still back there lurking in the corners no matter how clean a sweep Castiel had made of it—and him turning into a vegetable, or his body just giving out because of all the shit he’d put it through over the years; he’d lived under the assumption that Dean would be there when he died. Dean would survive. Dean would live. 

Faced with a future alone, Sam could barely draw a breath. He’d been there before. He’d been alone. Really alone. The six months Gabriel had made him suffer without Dean in an attempt to get the boys back on track with their ‘destiny’—those had been the most desolate months of his life—and the four months when Dean really was in Hell, but there had been Bobby then at least and Ellen and Jo. He still had a community of people he could have fallen back on if he’d chosen. The real deal had happened when Dean and Castiel had vanished into Purgatory. Sam had been on his own for the very first time in his entire life then.

He’d said it best when he’d tried to describe those hours, days, weeks after losing Dean, to Amelia. His world had imploded. His future was wiped off the map because it didn’t exist without Dean in it. His past was too painful to remember because Dean’s presence inhabited every moment of it. His present was unfathomable because there was a gaping void inside his chest where his heart ought to be but was conspicuously absent because Dean had taken it with him to the grave or wherever he had disappeared to. Sam had never known that kind of desolation in his life before or after.

Until now.

“You have to live, Dean,” Sam whispered against Dean’s hair. “I can’t let it end any other way.”

 

Sam turned a circle in the armory before sighing heavily and leaving empty handed. The whole point to this rendezvous was to try and earn trust, trust enough to make a deal. Him coming packing heat to the meeting wasn’t going to inspire anyone to trust in anything, though Garth would probably disagree emphatically and was most likely well prepared in any case should things go south at speed.

Natalie knocked on the door promptly at eight-thirty and Sam answered with a smile.

“Morning, Natalie. Whose this?” Sam smiled down at the little girl standing obediently at Natalie’s hip holding onto a large stuffed Harp seal pup and a book bag that looked to be old army surplus. 

“My niece, Dani. I hope you don’t mind I brought her along. My sister got into a tight spot with her weekend sitter and needed some help today.”

“Not at all,” Sam said. He squatted down to bring himself closer to the girl’s eye level. “Hey, Dani. I’m Sam. Nice to meet you.”

“Hey, Sam,” Dani said holding out her hand. 

Sam was slightly taken aback and smiled bigger, taking the girl’s small hand in his own. Most kids were afraid of Sam, mostly because of his height, and tended to take to Dean more easily because—at least beside Sam—he seemed less intimidating. Dani was apparently non-plussed by Sam’s towering over her.

“Whatcha got in the bag?” Sam asked. 

“Books.”

“Any favorites?” 

“Douglas Adams.”

Sam raised a brow at Natalie. “Seriously?”

Natalie shrugged, blushing just a tiny bit. “She takes after her mom. Bit of a prodigy. She’s been reading since she was three.”

“I also have a really cool book about a dragon that I just started,” Dani interjected. “Aunt Nat says your boyfriend’s sick. Can I read to him? It always makes me feel better when my mom reads to me when I’m sick.”

Sam levered himself off the ground and held his hand out to Dani. “I think he’d love that, Dani.” 

He passed a look over Dani’s head to Natalie at the ‘boyfriend,’ and she shrugged apologetically. No sense corrupting the youth too early on. Sam smiled wryly and led them into the den where Dean was sitting with a grimoire spread across his knees and Sam’s laptop off to the side on the couch. 

“Dean, Natalie’s hear. She’s brought her niece, Dani. Dani, this is Dean. My boyfriend.” Sam said the last word pointedly and Dean took the hint in stride without so much as a blink. He flipped the book closed and set it cover down on the table in front of him.

“Dani, huh? Well, it’s nice to meet you.”

Dani was staring wide eyed. “ _That’s_ your boyfriend? He’s cute.”

“Jesus,” Natalie said softly. “Are you seven or seventeen, child?”

Dean blushed to the roots of his hair and Sam smirked, loving every second of it.

“Thanks, Dani,” Dean said in his softest gravel. “I think you’re pretty cute, too.”

Dani grinned and without any preamble, plopped herself beside Dean on the couch and began unpacking  a stack of books from her bag. “I brought lots of books. Maybe I can read to you while Natty takes care of you.”

“Natty?”

Natalie raised her hand a little and rolled her eyes. Dean grinned. “That sounds like an excellent idea, Dani.”

“I was about to give him his morning doses,” Sam said. 

“I can do that.” Natalie surveyed Sam’s tucked in shirt and the jacket he’d already pulled on. “It looks like you were headed out. Go ahead. I’ll take care of Dean. Has he eaten?”

“No, Dean has not eaten,” Dean said. “And Dean would like come pancakes.”

Sam’s eyebrows rocketed to his hairline. Natalie looked surprised. “Feeling better are we?”

“Compared to the day before yesterday. I’m a new man.”

“Well, ‘new man.’ Take it slow and easy, for my sake, huh?” Sam suggested. He turned to Natalie. “I’ve got some errands to run and some shopping to do. I won’t be long.”

“Take your time, Sam. I’ve got this,” Natalie assure. She looked over at Dani, who was already ensconced beside Dean with her legs crossed in front of her, giving him a summary of every literary work she’d brought along. “Or she does. Either way, we’re good.”

Sam laughed outright and then leaned down over the table to press a chaste kiss to Dean’s temple. “I’ll be back. Behave for the pretty girls, and no flirting.”

Dean turned his head into the kiss and lifted a hand to briefly cup Sam’s cheek. “Promise.”

Sam nodded and left.

 

The day was cloudy and damp and there was snow in the forecast for late evening. Sam zipped his jacket up another couple of inches and climbed out of the Impala when he saw Garth’s old beater El Camino pull off the highway. Sam was a little surprised to see Garth wasn’t alone in the car. There was someone tucked up against the passenger door, looking a cross between disgruntled and terrified. 

Garth climbed out of the car with a wide grin and his arms spread wide. “Sam! Damn it’s good to see you.”

Sam accepted the hug with ease, even letting Garth hang on that extra second he always did that usually made people’s skin start to itch because it was just pressing too hard against the usual social mores. 

Sam peered in the driver’s window. “Garth, did you—?”

“Found him lurking in an abandoned industrial park in Dayton, Illinois,” Garth said. “Little too young to be out on his own, if you ask me. Easy catch.”

Sam squinted at the thing in the front seat that looked for all the world like a scared teenager whom he could have easily walked past on the street without taking a second glance. The kid had spiked dark hair, too many piercings littering his face, and the tattoos even blended in except that Sam recognized the distinctive patterns.

“I honestly didn’t expect you to bring him here,” Sam said. “You didn’t…threaten him, did you, Garth?”

 “Let’s just call it honor among monsters,” Garth said, flashing his fangs for a moment. “He might not be able to do what you want, but I figure he could know someone who does if it can be done, so I wasn’t cuttin’ him loose either way.”

Sam nodded cautiously. It wasn’t ideal, dealing with someone who had been manhandled and threatened, but it was a place to start and it was all he had. “Let’s go over to the shelter. Get out of this wind.”

Garth nodded, un-cuffed his passenger and marched him over to the rundown shelter of crumbling cinderblock and cracked windows.

Once inside, Sam unzipped his jacket and lifted it away from him slightly to show that he was unarmed. The kid scowled in evident confusion and then grudgingly sat down in a plastic chair that Garth pointed him to.

“What the hell do you want?” he spat. “I know what you are. You’re hunters. So, why haven’t you just killed me already?”

Sam sat down and leaned forward on his knees, putting on his best earnest face. “Because I need your help. What’s your name?”

The kid looked at Sam like he’d lost his mind more than a few miles back down the road. “Grathoc. But most people just call me Gat.”

“Gat,” Sam intoned. “I need to know if it’s possible for your kind to do something in particular.”

“What?”

Sam shifted in his seat, hesitating because he wasn’t sure he was prepared for Gat’s next words to be anything other than ‘yes.’ “I need to know if the Djinn can create a unified dream between two people.”

“Why the hell do you want to know that?”

“I just do. Now. Can you?”

Gat looked Sam up and down, apparently still trying to decide if he was playing a few cards short. “No. I can’t.”

Sam sighed out a shaky breath, hands going up to press at his lips. It was a long shot anyway.

“But I know someone who can.”

Sam’s eyes shot back up. “Who? Where can I find him?”

_“She_ doesn’t like to be found,” Gat said. “And Djinn aren’t in the business of giving favors. And what the hell do you want to know for anyway!”

“Hey, son,” Garth grabbed Gat’s shoulder, letting his claws peek out enough to prick skin through the tough canvas of his jacket. “Let’s just settle down and hear ‘ole Sammy out.”

“Garth—.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I know. Only Dean gets to call you that,” Garth finished sheepishly.

“Who the fuck is Dean? And what the hell do you want!” Gat shouted.

Sam put his hands up, palm out. “Dean is my brother—.”

“Wait. Wait just a damn minute…Sam? You’re Sam? And Dean is your brother?” Gat asked, eyes getting wide, lips curving in a maniacal grin. “As in Sam and Dean Winchester?”

Sam nodded reluctantly. So much for dealing.

“Holy shit. I can’t believe I’m sitting in the same room as Sam-fucking-Winchester. Now, I really am surprised you haven’t killed me,” Gat said, scrabbling back against his chair to try and gain distance from Sam.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you,” Sam said. “I’m not going to kill you. I don’t…do that anymore. I just need you to listen and tell me if you think your friend can help me.”

“She’s not my ‘friend.’ And why would either of us help you? You’ve killed dozens of us.”

“My brother is dying.”

“And I should care, why?” Gat smirked. “One less hunter to deal with. Yay for fucking us.”

“Mind your manners, son,” Garth warned, fingers curling dangerously. There was a snarl beneath his words.

“Garth. Garth, it’s okay. He’s right. He has no reason to trust us. None.” Sam turned back to Gat. “Look. This is my offer: I get one dream for my brother and I, you and your ‘friend’ get two less hunters and all the blood you can drink.”

Gat’s jaw worked hard and his eyebrows did a contorted dance while he processed what Sam was telling him. “Wait…you _want_ us to kill you?”

“Sam! What the hell?” Garth wash tugging Gat back, forcing himself between the two men, staring at Sam like he’d never seen him before. “You don’t know what you’re sayin’.”

Sam just shook his head slowly, eyes wet and red now. “Garth, please. I do. I know exactly what I’m saying because I’ve been here before.”

“You _want_ us to fucking kill you?!” Gat was still stunned and mumbling in amazement.

“Shut up!” Garth snapped, shoving him backward. He spun on Sam, hands up as if he were approaching a rogue, wounded animal. “Sam, you can’t do this. I know it’s hard. I know you can’t see a way out right now, but it’ll get better. Time will—.”

“Time will not heal me!” Sam said a little desperately. He took a breath, tried to catch back his calm. He needed Garth with him on this. “Garth, I’ve been here before. I’ve been…alone before. I can’t do it again. I just…can’t. I do see a way out, and this is it. Please, I need your help.”

“Sam, I…” Garth looked into Sam’s face, and he saw the real truth behind the words. 

He saw the little boy who had grown up from his earliest memories in this broken hell of a life clinging like mad to the only constant that had ever been there for him. Dean. Dean was Sam’s anchor, the thing that would save him again and again in this world and all the others that had come before or would come after. Dean was the force that pushed him forward and pulled him back. He was the sword and the shield that Sam had wielded all his life, and no armor or blade had ever been truer. Dean was Sam’s soul, the piece that he could never be without because then there would be no more Sam.

“Jesus Christ, Dean is gonna haunt me into the afterlife for this,” Garth muttered, pushing back on his ball cap and shaking his head in disbelief of what he was about to do. “All right. All right. What now?”

Sam turned back to Gat. “Do you think your ‘friend’ will be interested in my deal?”

Gat eyed him now like he was sizing him up. “For just any hunter? She would laugh. For Sam and Dean Winchester?” He shrugged minimally. “She might.”

“How do I find her?”

“You don’t,” Gat said. “If she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be. But I can…put in a few calls, see if I can get her to meet us. Take me back to my place. I’ll call you when I hear something.”

“Uh, no.” Garth put a hand at the back of Gat’s neck. “I’ll be serving as your escort until you can put a finger on ‘I Dream of Jeannie,’ okay? Not that we don’t trust you, mind you, but…well, we don’t trust you.”

“It could take weeks!” Gat whined.

Sam stood up then, bringing all his towering height and muscle to bear in one long shadow over Gat. “I don’t have weeks, and I do have you.”

Gat’s eyes went wide and he pressed back into Garth’s grip. “Okay, okay! Just…give me a few days. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Sam passed a look to Garth. Garth nodded. “I’ll keep him on the straight and narrow, and I’ll get back to you as quick as I can.”

Sam nodded and stepped up to Garth, opening his arms. Garth smiled a little in surprise and took the offered hug. “Thanks, Garth. I—.”

“I got your back, man,” Garth said, giving him a final squeeze and stepping back. “I’ll call you in a few days, or sooner.”

Sam nodded again, zipped up his jacket and went back out into the cold. 

Sleet stung his face and bare hands and the sky had grown darker. Behind him he could hear Garth coaxing and verbally wrestling Gat back out of the building and into his El Camino. He dropped into the Impala and brought the engine to life, listening to her cough in mild complaint against the increasing cold. Out the window, he saw Garth pull away with a hand raised in farewell. Sam watched them go and then dropped his forehead against the steering wheel.

His plan was in motion. There was no going back now. He lifted his head and felt a strange lightness across his shoulders as he pulled Baby into gear and set her tracking back out onto the highway, gunning the engine at the bottom of the ramp and letting her roar down the open road like she had once done years ago. 

“All open road for us, Dean. Soon,” Sam whispered into the empty air that still somehow contained Dean’s presence. “Just hang on a bit longer.”

 

Sam made it back to the bunker by early afternoon, laden with grocery bags, a case of beer, and two steaming pizza boxes.

“Hey, guys! I brought lunch!” Sam called, depositing his bags in the kitchen. When he didn’t get an answer, he poked his head into the den and saw Dean stretched out on the couch, a book laying open and face down on his chest, Dani curled up against his side with her arm flung over him. He couldn’t help but smile tenderly at the scene and then his eye caught Natalie’s and she raised a finger to her lips, unfolding herself from her chair and coming into the kitchen with him.

“They fell asleep about an hour ago,” she said, rooting through the plastic bags Sam had brought in and methodically unloading the contents.

“Looks like they really hit it off,” Sam said, sticking the pizzas in the oven to stay warm. “You okay with that?”

Natalie gave him a confused look. “Why wouldn’t I be? Dean’s a great guy. I think he would have made a wonderful father.”

“Yeah. He would have,” Sam said a little wistfully, pausing in front of the open refrigerator door with a bag of avocados in his hand.

Natalie took the avocados and put them in the hydrator with a box of cherry tomatoes, then nudged it closed with her elbow. “You two ever thought of having kids?”

Sam gave himself a little mental shake and turned back to the bags on the table. “I think we both kind of did in that maybe-in-another-life sort of way.”

“Why another life?”

Sam kept his eyes down. “Well, it was pretty obvious from the beginning that we were…what we are to each other, and that just kind of put all of that other sort of ‘family’ stuff out of our reach.”

“You mean because you were brothers?”

“Yeah,” Sam sighed. “Pretty much.”

Natalie set down a box of ginger tea and reached out to squeeze Sam’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. We knew what we were giving up. More or less. We made that decision for each other. It wasn’t always easy. In fact, Dean had a family once, a few years back.”

“But I thought…?”

“Like I said, it wasn’t always easy. I was…gone for a while, and I told him before I left that he needed to live, needed to be happy. If I wasn’t around for that, then so be it. I wanted him to have it with someone else. Her name was Lisa. She had a son, Ben. And you’re right, Dean did make a great dad.”

“What happened?”

“I came back,” Sam said simply. 

Natalie unloaded another bag. “What about you?”

“Me?” Sam hesitated a minute, considering. “There was a woman once. Amelia. I loved her very much.”

“And Dean?”

“Dean was—I thought he was dead. For almost a year. I didn’t know what to do, how to live. I’d never been alone.”

“Not ever?”

“No, never,” Sam confirmed. “Amelia helped me patch myself back together, got me settled into a normal life. It was something I’d never had before. I didn’t know how to do it.”

“You’re doing pretty well now,” Natalie said with a  soft smile.

Sam raised his head, glanced into the other room where Dean was snoring softly now, Dani rising and falling in small fractions on his chest was he breathed in and out. “Yeah, pretty well.” He blinked away the sudden burn behind his eyes. “So…you hungry?”

“Huh? Well, yeah, I suppose—.”

“Good, ‘cause I got enough for all of us. Hope you like extra beef with olives.”

“That’s fine, but we couldn’t impose—.”

“Nonsense. We’d enjoy the company. Dean’s probably getting fed up with just my ugly mug, and I know I could use something to…distract me.”

Natalie’s eyebrows pinched together a moment as she registered the pain in Sam’s voice. “Okay. Sure. We’d love to join you.”

“Great.”

Natalie went into the den and squatted beside the couch, running her fingers gently along Dani’s cheek. “Hey, Angel. Time to wake up. Sam brought us pizza.”

“Pizza?” Dani murmured sleepily, working the dryness out of her mouth. “Yum.”

A soft chuckle issued from Dean above her head. “Girl after my own heart.”

Natalie grinned and looked up as he opened his eyes. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty good,” he said. He ruffled Dani’s hair playfully, “Except for this extra appendage I seem to have grown.”

“Hey!” Dani pouted indignantly, but there was a sparkle in her eye. She pushed herself up and took her book off Dean’s chest. “We didn’t get to finish the chapter.”

“Maybe a little later, huh, kiddo?” Natalie suggested. “Why don’t you go to the bathroom—over that way—and wash up, and we’ll eat.”

“Okay.”

Sam came into the room balancing plates on top of the stacked pizza boxes, with two beer bottles and a soda held in his other hand. He slid everything down onto the low table in front of the couch, then sat down beside Dean.

“Nice nap?”

“Yeah. I was dreaming about boats in the shape of dragons floating through the air with giant hot air balloons attached.”

“What was it you put in that IV again?” Sam asked Natalie with a grin.

“Shut up. It was the book Dani was reading. You know that little scrap is really smart. She’s a great reader.”

“Sounds like you made a friend,” Sam said.

Dean smiled, eyes gone soft and tender, a little unfocused as he remembered another child. “Yeah, I think so.”

Sam squeezed Dean’s knee. “Hey, you feel like eating anything? I hate to put this all in front of you….”

“Well, I think I remember telling you to go out,” Dean said, “but I suppose this is the best I can hope for, huh? Seeing as how I just can’t get rid of you.”

Sam flipped open the top pizza box and pulled out a cheesy piece and plated it for Natalie, then handed her a beer. “Yup. Good as it gets. So lump it.”

“Bitch.”

Sam winked. “Jerk.”

Dani bounded back into the den then and Sam handed her a large piece of pizza and a soda. “There you go, Dani. Dig in. There’s plenty.”

Dani shot Dean a worried look. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“No, sweetheart. I can’t,” Dean said gently, taken aback by the sudden concern in her dark brown eyes. “But you go ahead. I’m okay. Promise. Sam’s gonna pour another one of those protein drinks or something down me soon I imagine.”

Dani wrinkled her nose. “Yuk.”

“Yeah, not my favorite either.”

“Sure you don’t want anything?” Sam urged softly.

“No, I’m fine. Go ahead and eat.” Dean leaned back into the corner and spread his arms over the back and arm of the couch. Sam got his own piece of pizza and handed Dean his bottle. Dean grinned and popped the top off with his ring. Sam grinned back and settled into the cushions, leaning slightly into Dean’s side. Dean’s hand came down and around to play absently with the hair at the back of Sam’s neck. 

Dani picked out a movie and they all watched well into the afternoon. For once Dean stayed awake and it was Sam who passed out on his shoulder, turning into Dean’s side and wrapping an arm across his chest in his sleep. Natalie smiled at them and got up to take care of the leftover pizza and dishes. 

“Why don’t you gather up your books, Dani? I’ll pick up and give Dean his medicine for the night, and then we’re going to head home. Okay?” Natalie said quietly.

“Aww…but I didn’t get to read any more to Dean,” Dani complained. 

“Maybe your Aunt Nat can bring you back sometime,” Dean assuaged her. “We can finish then. I’m looking forward to seeing if they can find that map.”

Dani grinned and looked hopefully at Natalie. “Can I, please? I really want to come back. And I want to see the library Dean talked about. He said I could borrow some books maybe.”

Natalie rolled her eyes in defeat. “We’ll see what we can do, but for now, get your stuff. We need to leave these guys alone for awhile.”

Dani slowly packed up her books and then finally came to sit opposite Dean and watched Sam sleep for several minutes in silence. Dean’s hand was brushing along Sam’s back and through his hair absently.

“He looks so happy,” Dani whispered. “So, why is he crying?”

“Hmm?” Dean frowned.

Dani pointed with her finger, leaned forward and caught a tear on the tip without touching Sam’s cheek. “He’s crying in his sleep.”

Dean’s arm tightened around Sam’s shoulders. “He’s, uh, maybe just having a bad dream, sweetheart.”

Dani looked at the tear somberly, then raised her big eyes to meet Dean’s. “You’re dying, aren’t you?”

Dean sucked in a breath. 

“It’s okay. Aunt Nat told me. I know what she does for a living. She takes care of really sick people who are dying. I wasn’t supposed to say anything, but I think that’s why he’s crying. He’s going to miss you.”

Dean swallowed thickly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right, Dani.”

Natalie came back into the room then and saw the deep etched lines of pain in Dean’s face. She knelt beside him. “Dean, are you all right? Are you hurting?”

He blinked and slowly looked down at her. “Out of the mouth of babes, huh?” he said softly.

Natalie looked quickly at Dani. “Dani, what did you—?”

“No, Natalie. It’s okay,” Dean stopped her. “She didn’t say anything wrong. Just really…honest.”

Natalie grumbled a little but set about giving Dean his injections and hooking up his IV. “Would you like me to stay until it’s done?”

“No, you guys go on home. Thanks for today. It was real nice. Sam needed a break, and I appreciate it more than I can say.”

“It was no problem. We had fun,” Natalie said. “Come on, Dani. Say good-bye. It’s time to go.”

Dani shouldered her bag and stood in front of Dean for a moment as if debating something before she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll come back and read to you more,” she promised. “Tell Sam ‘bye’ and thanks for the pizza.”

Dean blinked at her and then lifted a hand to muss her hair a bit. “I’ll be sure and do that.”

Natalie took Dani’s hand and they headed out, but Dani turned at the doorway. “Tell Sam it’ll all be okay, so he shouldn’t be so sad.”

Dean nodded, eyes filling, and watched them go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the Star Trekky title... :)


	9. Checkmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam finds what he's searching for and Dean hangs onto life by a thread.

The next couple of weeks passed slow and lazy. Dean was doing well at his new medication levels, and Natalie came over now to give Sam time to go out and run errands, bringing Dani with her every once in a while. Sam would help her do her homework and Dean would sit and listen to her read and they would often stay into the evening and have dinner together. 

It wasn’t until the fourth week on this new routine that things took a turn for the worse again. 

Dean had another attack of bloody vomiting and his midsection had become enflamed and distended as the tumor more aggressively grew in size. Natalie upped his pain medication as far as was safe without sending him into a coma and increased his anti-inflammatory and nausea medication enough that he was at least able to get out of bed. 

Sam sat on pins and needles waiting for Garth to call.

He’d been keeping Sam updated a couple of times a week, saying Gat was a recalcitrant but at least consistent informant. They were making headway. It just wasn’t happening very quickly. Sam wanted to yell and shout into the phone that they needed to work faster, that time was running out, but he also knew Garth was doing him a huge favor and hadn’t seen his family in nearly a month because of what Sam was asking of him. So, he kept his panic behind his teeth and tried to focus on Dean.

They didn’t do research anymore, or watch many movies. Sam still sat and read aloud to Dean during the afternoons, but Dean mostly slept while Sam puttered around taking care of the bare necessities of their living, or just lying with Dean on the bed or the couch while he slept, listening to him breathe. 

They had no more upsets or arguments about Sam’s rocky past and how unfair it was that Dean had drawn such a short straw. Sam kept his shortcomings to himself now if he even bothered to waste time thinking about them anymore. He had a solution in the works. He just needed it to fully materialize.

The call finally came early on a Friday morning shortly after Sam had gotten Dean around and settled in the den.

“We’ve found her, Sam,” Garth said, voice cautiously excited.

“Where? Where are you?”

“Michigan. Abandoned railway hub. Gat’s made contact.”

“Can she do it? Will she?” Sam’s fingers were curling painfully into the large muscle of his thigh.

“We’re still working on that part. She’s not real talkative, this one.” Garth paused here and Sam’s stomach tightened. “I don’t think I can get her to come to you, Sam.”

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. His first instinct was to call Garth off, just let the Djinn go, forget the whole thing because there was no way he was leaving Dean, not for the amount of time it was going to take to get to Michigan. Even if he drove all night and turned around and came straight back without sleeping, it would take him twenty-four hours at least. 

But he’d come this far. If he didn’t take the risk, he’d never know, and Dean would be gone in a matter of weeks, possibly days, and Sam would be left to wonder for the rest of his life—however long that may or may not be—if he had given up their last chance at the good life.  “Just—stay there. I’ll come to you.”

“Are you sure, Sam? You said Dean was—.”

“I’m sure. Tell me where to meet you.”

“The Bristol Inn. It’s off Route 10 outside of town. I think I can convince her to come with me that far.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll find it. Gimme a few hours. I’ll call you from the road.”

“See you soon, Sam.”

Sam hung up and immediately dialed Natalie

“Hey, Sam. Everything okay?” Natalie answered. Sam could hear her turning down her radio in the background.

“Natalie, I need you to do something for me. Please.”

There was the staticky sound on the line of Natalie readjusting the phone against her ear and the Doppler effect of her head turning as she probably checked her mirrors, ready to find a quick place to turn the car around if she needed to. “What is it, Sam? What’s wrong? Is Dean okay?”

“He’s fine,” Sam said, then amended. “Well, as fine as he can be, I suppose. But I—I have something I need to do. It may take a day…or two. I don’t know. I’m hoping for the best, but… I can’t take him with me, and I don’t really have anybody else I can ask—.”

“Of course, I’ll stay with him, Sam,” Natalie said before he could finish. “But…are you sure you want to take off right now. I mean…”

Sam’s answer came across the connection on a trembling, uncertain breath. “I don’t have a choice, and this is for Dean.”

“Sam, you sound…what’s going on, Sam? What are you doing? Please don’t do anything stupid.”

“That’s up for debate,” Sam said, more to himself than Natalie. “I just really need to do this.”

“Okay. Okay. Just tell me when you need me to be there.”

“As soon as you can?” Sam’s voice was desperate.

Natalie paused on the line, Sam could almost hear her mentally rearranging her schedule to do him this favor. “Okay. I can be there by eleven. Will that be soon enough?”

“It’ll have to be,” Sam said. “Thank you, Natalie. This means….”

“Anything I can do, Sam. Really. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

“Yeah.”

Sam dropped the phone to the bed beside him and scrubbed his hands across his face. His cheeks were rough with three days of stubble and his eyes were dry and would be red rimmed and bloodshot if he bothered to look in a mirror. He glanced at the time on his phone and pushed up from the bed. Dean needed his next round of medication in a few minutes.

He went into the kitchen, pulled what he needed from the fridge, and then went into the den.

Dean was propped in a nest of pillows in the corner of the couch. He looked like he was just sleeping peacefully at the moment. Sam had gotten him through a shower this morning and dressed him in his usual jeans and t-shirt and warm flannel. Dean hated laying around no matter how sick he was. He’d always hated it, and he hated it more when someone suggested that he just stay in his sweats or pajamas. Being fully dressed made him feel like he was at least making an effort. 

Sam sat down quietly and picked up the tiny jar of lip balm on the table, unscrewed the cap, swiped the pad of his thumb across the semi-solid substance and then very carefully and with the lightest touch smoothed it over Dean’s dry lips. 

Dean opened his eyes slowly and only a little, lips curving and drawing tight in their dryness. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” Sam said softly. Dean’s mouth moved against Sam’s skin and kissed the pad of his thumb as it stroked over his lips. Sam smiled. “Tease.”

“You know it.” 

Dean’s voice was breathy and worn and barely there, and it made Sam’s heart erode just that little bit more. He hated himself for letting things get this bad. It didn’t matter that this was what Dean wanted. Dean had jealously and selfishly brought Sam back from the grave with every trick and trade at his disposal over the years without any regard to what Sam had wanted. So, Sam was going to fix this the only way he knew how with the only option left to him now and hell be damned what Dean thought about it.

But Sam kept that all out of his touch, kept his hands steady against Dean’s skin, and his heart beating slow in his chest no matter how it wanted to rabbit in anticipation of what he was about to do tonight. He leaned back a little and began to gently unwrap Dean’s hand. It felt slight and brittle between his own. Cold to the touch. He gripped it suddenly, as tight as he dared, and brought Dean’s knuckles to his lips, pressing them there.

“Hey now,” Dean said. “Don’t be doin’ that, huh? You promised.”

Sam nodded infinitesimally, and swallowed back against his tears. He breathed in harshly through his nostrils, then opened his eyes and looked straight at Dean. “I know.”

Sam set to work doling out Dean’s injections and hanging up another IV bag. They were keeping him on them most of the time since he was barely able to keep anything down now and didn’t have the energy to eat or drink anyway.

“Natalie’s coming over later.”

“Oh. Wasn’t she just here yesterday?”

“Yeah. She was. But Garth called a little bit ago and said he needed my help.” Sam watched Dean’s face close for any sign of suspicion or anger that Sam was leaving him in this state to go on some hunt. “He said it was an emergency.”

A couple of weeks ago Dean would have asked questions, would have been eager to hear of anything going on outside the reinforced walls of the bunker, but he didn’t have the energy now even if the interest was still there. He just nodded and laid his head back on the pillows. Sam’s breath hitched and caught between a sigh of relief and a sob of fear. 

“Anyway, Natalie said she could stay with you, but only if you promise to be nice,” Sam teased gently. “And no flirting!”

“Well, there went the evening’s entertainment,” Dean said with a tiny twist of smile.

Sam smiled back. “You dirty old man.”

“You love it.”

Sam leaned in and pressed a kiss to Dean’s exposed throat, letting his lips linger over the thin beat of his pulse. He breathed in deeply the scent that was Dean, not knowing how many more times he would be able to do it, not wanting to think about it. Dean hadn’t been near the Impala in weeks, but Sam still swore he caught a whiff of motor oil and leather. There was the vague scent of smoke and ash and fire that was embedded in both their pores for all eternity. But beneath that, Dean had always smelled of dry earth and hard stone to Sam; of strong things that Sam could burrow into and be protected by from the rest of the world. Dean was his fortress, and Sam had no idea how he could live a single day exposed to the world at large without his guardian and shield. His Dean.

If he got his way in the next twenty-four hours. He’d never have to figure it out.

 

Natalie showed up a few minutes early while Sam was still stuffing a few things into his bag. She looked at him warily, never having seen that cutting, determined look on his face that he used to wear on a regular basis years ago when he was on the hunt.

“Sam? Please tell me what’s going on.”

“I told you I was going to fix this, Natalie. I meant it.”

Natalie frowned in bewilderment, but then her eyes shot wide when she saw the butt of Dean’s pearl handled revolver glinting under a fold of the bag on the table. Sam jerked the zipper closed. 

“Sam, this is—whatever this is, please don’t do it. Please! Just stop and think—.”

“I’ve thought, Natalie. And it isn’t what you’re thinking. It’s going to be okay. One way or another.”

Natalie followed him to the door as he shouldered the pack. “It’s the ‘another’ I’m worried about.”

Sam stopped, turned and bent to give her a quick fierce hug. “Trust me, Natalie. Please. Just look after Dean for me. I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”

 

The Bristol Inn was twenty miles outside of Doring, Michigan, the only motel in a fifty mile radius. It was slightly run down and didn’t see much clientele anymore, and Sam felt fairly sure that if things went sideways tonight, he and Garth could find plenty of obliging space in the surrounding fields to bury a couple of Djinn bodies. He had two silver daggers dipped in lamb’s blood wrapped tightly and tucked in his bag along with Dean’s gun, just in case. 

Garth’s El Camino was parked in front of the corner room diagonal from the front office, about as far away and secluded as it looked like he could get. There were no other cars in the lot.

Sam pulled up, checked the weapons in his bag, and then rapped on the door twice.

“Hey, Sam,” Garth greeted him, pulling the door wide. He looked tired at the edges, but in general good health, mostly just like a man who wanted to get the job done so he could get back home to his wife and pups.

“Hey, Garth.”

Sam stepped in and dropped his bag slowly beside the door. Gat was fidgeting at the table by the bathroom door, knee bouncing furiously, thumbs alive on the face of his phone, muttering under his breath and casting half terrified looks at the room’s other occupant.

She was beautiful. Something Sam hadn’t really expected. She had long, black hair that fell in thick silken waves down her back and pooled a little on the bed behind her where she sat ramrod straight, glimmering eyes at half-mast as she watched him move to pull out a chair and sit down backwards on it across from her, close enough to incite a modicum of trust, but far enough away that he would have time to react if she attacked. 

Her tattoos were similar to others he’d seen, but appeared much more complex and elegant. They slithered subtly on her skin, shifting over her bare arms and fanning up her neck and along her jaw to curl delicately over her cheekbones and in front of her ears.

“I’m Sam—.”

“Winchester. I know.” Her voice was rich and dark and fathomless like the star littered night sky stretched across an ancient, endless desert.

“Yes. That’s right. Thank you for agreeing to come…?” Sam waited for a name, but the woman seemed disinclined to offer it. He continued, rubbing his palms against his thighs. “Can I ask…why did you agree?”

The woman blinked long and slow, mesmerizing. “The Winchester brothers’ death would be a prize, a trophy beyond price, but…I owe you a favor.”

Sam blinked. “A favor? I don’t understand.”

“Your tame angel. The one they called Castiel. On your orders, he freed several of my kind from bondage. Including my youngest sister.”

Sam blinked again, brain racing back to the warehouse so many years ago in which Crowley had gathered and tortured dozens of monsters in trying to find the prized Alphas of their species. In the end, Dean had asked Castiel to go in and kill all the remaining prisoners, knowing that Crowley would just hunt them down again, or they would fall victim to a hunter in their weakened states, and they certainly couldn’t be left there to die—that was inhumane even to Dean. Castiel had complied without hesitation. 

“By freed, you mean…?”

“Yes. I know that they are dead. But it was a mercy. What awaited them would have been a fate worse than death, and they deserved better…for their loyalty.”

Sam’s jaw loosened and dropped. “Then you’re—.”

“Mala. Alpha to the Djinn.”

Sam blinked, snapped his jaw shut, ducked his head a little in a kind of subconscious bow. 

“So, Sam Winchester. A favor for a favor. And the agreed upon price?”

Sam nodded, swallowing. “Still stands. My brother’s and my life for one dream.”

Mala shifted just slightly forward. Sam had to force himself to stay still under the scrutinous intensity of her dark eyes. “What you ask, Sam Winchester, has not been done often. It is not just my will to make it possible. It will take your minds in complete accord. Are they?”

Sam hesitated. If Dean knew what he was up to, would he agree? If he knew the final outcome would not be just his death, but Sam’s as well? No. Dean would sooner shoot him himself that let him do this to them. But Sam couldn’t see any other way. He just hoped that when it came to it, he could convince Dean that this was the only way. 

“Yes.”

Mala squinted at him. “Give me your blood.”

Sam frowned in confusion. Mala motioned to his wrist. He held it out tentatively, tugging up his sleeve.

Without touching his skin, Mala drew her nail across his wrist and coaxed out a thin rivulet of blood that she caught on her finger. She rubbed it in between finger and thumb and wafted it under her nose, breathing deeply, eyes rolling back a little and closing, like she had stumbled onto the finest of vintage wines and it was going straight to her head. When she opened her eyes again a moment later, they were glowing faintly blue.

“You and your brother are indeed a rare prize, Sam Winchester. I see in your heart the grief of a lifetime, more than any soul should bear alone. Only the love you share with your brother has given you the strength to survive.” She leaned in close so that Sam could smell the dry desert winds of a million years past in her breath. “Without him, you are a castle built on sand, to crumble into the raging, tumultuous seas of your own broken soul.”

Sam felt tears surge and spill over before he had a chance to draw breath to stop them. He felt Garth’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing in reassurance. Mala leaned back, her eyes hooded again and blank.

“I will go with you, Sam Winchester. And you will have your final dream together.”

 

Mala ordered Gat back to whence he’d come, a command that he looked incredibly grateful to obey, no matter that he was a long hike from his home stomping grounds. Garth agreed to come along to supervise the proceedings at the bunker, and when all was said and done, give Sam and Dean their final rights by fire as hunters. 

Sam was holding open the rear door of the Impala for the Djinn when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He answered, voice cracking a little as his mind frog-leapt across a dozen possibilities for her calling, each worse than the last. “Natalie?”

“Sam? Where are you?” Natalie’s voice was tense, but not panicked. “You need to come home. Now.”

“Natalie, what’s happened?”

“Dean’s fallen into a coma, Sam. I went to wake him for his last round of meds, but he’s unresponsive.” Her voice broke a little, “Sam, it’s time. You need to be here.”

Sam’s fingers flexed around the phone, the tears of earlier pushed back to the surface and balanced on his lashes. “I’m on my way, Natalie. Just…tell him to wait for me.”

Sam pushed the Impala to her limits on the way back to the bunker, letting her roar down the road, eating up miles under her sleek black body like she had in years past, swallowing the night and carrying him unfailing back to the only home he’d ever known. 

 

Sam clamored down the iron steps and shed his jacket to the floor, calling Natalie’s name as he ducked into the den and library.

“Natalie? Natalie!”

“In here, Sam!”

Sam followed the sound of her voice down the hallway to his and Dean’s bedroom, his ridiculously long legs eating up the floor space to the bed, where he dropped down to knees. Natalie was sitting forward in the chair at the foot of the bed, hands pulled up inside the sleeves of her oversized sweater, huddled over her knees, rocking herself ever so slightly. 

She was good at her job, good at watching good people die for shitty reasons and not breaking down over it, but Dean was different. Sam and Dean had become friends, against all the rules of her profession, and her heart was breaking to watch Sam’s face fold and crumble and streak with tears as he knelt by his brother, by the love of his life, and begged him to wait just a little bit longer.

“Dean. Dean, listen to me. I know you’re going to be mad about this, but you’ve got to understand,” Sam whispered, lips brushing softly against the shell of Dean’s ear. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times over the years, but one of our pig-heads always seemed to get in the way. We spent so much time hurting each other, lying to each other, when we finally found this—a place to call home where we could dump our baggage and air out all our laundry—I thought maybe there still was a God and maybe he did give a shit about us in the end. It was as happy an end as we were ever going to get. But I thought too soon, it turns out. You and I, it seems, don’t get happy endings. So, this is me, Dean, making our own happy ending. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We find the solution, we kick it in the ass, and we make it all right again.”

Sam swiped at his eyes then cupped Dean’s cheek and leaned into it, pressing their foreheads together. “Be as mad at me as you want, big brother, but I can’t live without. I love you too goddamn much.”

Garth came in then, just behind Mala, and Natalie started a bit, breath catching at the awesomely strange beauty standing in the room.

“Uh, Sam?”

Sam didn’t move. “It’s all right, Natalie. I invited them. This is Garth and Mala.”

“Hi, Natalie,” Garth offered.

“Hey,” Natalie said in a tiny voice. Her eyes were still on Mala, but Mala was ignoring her.

Sam lifted himself a little and turned to Natalie. “Natalie, thank you for everything. For all that you’ve done. For both of us. I owe you so much. But it’s time for you to go.”

“Sam…? No, now hold on. What are you going to do? What’s she going to do to you?!” Natalie started to stand, but Garth took hold of her arm, firmly but gently.

“Natalie,” he said in a low voice. “We need to let them be. This what Sam wants. This is how it has to be. Come on. I’ll walk you out.”

Natalie shook her head, tears streaming down her face. She jerked free of Garth’s hand and rushed to Sam’s side, draping herself across his back, and burying her face against his neck. 

“Please, Sam,” she begged. “Please, don’t do this. Dean wouldn’t want it this way.”

Sam tilted his head enough to rest it against Natalie’s and sighed, smiling a little. “I know, Natalie. I can hear him in my head, but I can’t so anything else. I’ve made so many wrong choices in my life, and Dean’s been there to clean up after every one of them. He’s sacrificed so much to keep me alive, to save me again and again. So, this time I’m making the sacrifice, to give him the life he should have had.”

Mala walked around the bed, insinuated herself onto the mattress and leaned over, breathing in long and deep. “He is fading.” She raised her eyes to meet Sam’s. “If you are determined to do this, it must be now. You cannot dream when you are dead.”

“Will you have long enough? If he…?”

“When I touch him, he will go into a kind of stasis. He will last as long as his blood lasts,” Mala said.

“His blood?” Natalie sat back, eyes gone wide with shock and horror. “Who are you? What are you going to do!”

Sam turned, grabbing Natalie’s wrist. She tried to twist away, to lunge at Mala, but Sam held her fast, taking her jaw in his hand and forcing her gaze back to him. His eyes were dark and glittering, a dangerous determination in them that she had never seen before.

“I know what I’m doing, Natalie. Now, please…please go. Go now.”

Natalie stared at him dumbly, shaking her head slowly back and forth, and let Garth pull her to her feet and lead her toward the door. She stopped halfway there, freezing in the middle of the floor, and turned.

“Let me stay. Please. Let me stay. I need to. I need to see that you’re…taken care of.”

Sam glanced at Garth who shrugged uneasily, then at Mala who lifted her chin in an ambivalent gesture, then looked back to Natalie.

“I promise I won’t interfere,” she said quickly. “I just need to see this through. Please.”

Sam nodded once. “Garth will take care of us. Mala goes free and unhindered. You…let them both do what needs to be done, agreed?”

Natalie nodded, and came back to sit in her chair, huddling in on herself again, eyes glued to Dean’s face.

Sam lifted Dean and slid up onto the bed, settling in behind him against the headboard, and collecting him into his arms securely. He looked up at Mala. “So, how does this work?”

She leaned in closer, all her attention focused on Sam and Dean. She lifted a hand, skated it all along Dean’s prone form under the sheets. “I will put you to sleep. The rest…I will take care of.”

“Can I control it? If he starts to figure out what’s going on, can I control the dream?”

“You can control it in as much as your heart’s greatest desire will be your template. This only works if you are both in accord on what your heart’s desire truly is,” she cautioned.

Sam swallowed. “We are. But he’s stubborn, if he tries to fight it like he did the last time, to wake up, can you stop him?”

“No. If he wakes, he will die.”

“But the last Djinn, he tried to convince Dean to stay…?”

“No,” Mala corrected. “He could not. Whatever tried to convince your brother to remain in the dream was of his own heart’s making. And if he was strong enough to fight that…”

Sam held Dean a little tighter to him. “This is going to work. And…even if it doesn’t, our deal stands. You keep me under. You take what you need.”

Mala nodded her assent and reached toward the two of them. Sam twined his fingers with Dean’s, pressed his lips to his temple, a single tear sliding down his cheek.

“See you in my dreams, big brother,” he whispered.

Mala caressed his skin once with the barest touch and the world went dark.


	10. Into The Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it says on the tin...

“Hey. ’S your turn.”

Dean fumbled his way up out of a hazy mish-mashed dream full of Sam’s tears and a thousand miles of plastic tubing that kept trying to bind him to a beautiful woman with strange living tattoos. His stomach hurt, and he had to blink several times to dispel the effects of the dream and bring reality solidly into place around him. Sam’s broad palm was against his shoulder gently pushing him to sit up, and there was a thin wail coming down the hallway that was steadily growing in strength. He blinked again, trying to put a name to the sound, trying to recall why it was pulling hard at his heart, demanding his attention.

“Dean? Want me to get her?”

Her. Talia. His and Sam’s daughter. Dean’s brain finally clicked over. It was a baby crying.

“No, no. I got this one,” he said, rolling out of bed.

Sam’s hand slid off Dean’s shoulder and within seconds he was snoring quietly again.

 “Talia, baby girl, you’re keeping’ your daddy up,” Dean murmured to the air as he pulled on his jeans, leaving them unsnapped and making his way toward a soft pink glow at the end of the hallway. He went into the room and bent over the crib, reaching down and scooping the tiny bundle of tense arms and legs wrapped in white, pink, and baby green flannel into his hands. 

He settled his daughter against his shoulder and shushed her softly while he deftly laid out a soft blanket, fresh diaper, and popped the top on the baby wipes container before laying her down to change her. She fussed again the instant he laid her into the changing pad, but he bent low over her and stayed there as she reached for an amulet that dangled down from a rough leather cord around his neck and tugged it toward her mouth. 

Dean’s eyes caught on the dull gleam of brass and for just a second the world tilted sideways and he felt an incredible weakness take over his whole body. He caught himself against the edge of the changing table.

“Fuck.”

And then the world righted itself.

“Don’t listen to your old pop, sweetie-bug. If I ever hear that kind of language come out of your pretty mouth…you’re in for a bar of soap.”

“Dean, everything okay?” Sam asked sleepily from the door.

Dean turned as far as he could with Talia still clinging to the amulet. “Yeah. Fine. Why?”

Sam waved a hand vaguely. “Heard you on the monitor.”

“Huh?”

“You—.” Sam shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll get her bottle.”

Dean finished changing Talia and tucked her up on his shoulder again, marveling for what was probably the hundredth time at how tiny she was, her little butt just filling his palm while his fingers barely had to spread to span her back. She whuffled and rooted against his shoulder, and he could feel warm drool on bare skin as she stuffed her tiny fist against her mouth and sucked in an effort to pacify herself until one of her daddies got her a bottle. 

Dean grabbed a burp cloth and followed Sam toward the kitchen. “Hang on, sweetie-bug. Dinner’s comin’.”

Sam was standing beside the bottle warmer, arms crossed, eyes closed, leaning on the counter. Dean smiled and nudged him with his free shoulder. “Dude, go back to bed. It’s fine. I got her.”

“I’m up now,” Sam smiled back tiredly.

“We don’t both have to sacrifice all our—.” 

Dean froze. The world tilted again, dimming at the edges. His hands automatically tightened around Talia who let out a distressed whimper, then he felt Sam’s huge warm hands at his hips, steadying him.

“Dean?”

“God. Damn it,” Dean cursed in a cutting whisper, letting out a huff of held breath and blinking to clear his vision.

“Dean, what’s going on? Are you okay?” Sam was moving to take Talia from Dean’s shoulder so he could take a minute and get his bearings. “C’mere, Angel. Give your daddy a minute to breathe.”

Sam cuddled the little girl close and picked the bottle out of the warmer when it dinged at him. He held it and Talia in one hand and used the other to steer Dean into the den. “Dean, come sit down.”

Dean followed without much goading and dropped onto the couch beside Sam. He absently rubbed a hand over his stomach.

Sam frowned over the bottle he was coaxing into Talia’s mouth. “Dean, talk to me.”

“I—.” Dean shook his head. “I’m fine. I don’t know what that was. Just a—I don’t know. But I’m okay, Sam. Really.”

Sam didn’t look convinced. “You’ve been getting up too much with her at night. You should let me do it for the next couple. You need to rest.”

“And you don’t?” Dean leaned over to brush his nose against Talia’s satin cheek as she sucked her bottle down like a champ and felt Sam’s fingers in his hair, scratching lightly against his scalp. He turned his head enough so that Sam could see his reinstated smile. “I’m pretty sure you sitting here half asleep feeding a baby is not supposed to be sexy, but it definitely is.”

Sam rolled his eyes and gave Dean a light slap across the back of his head. “We need to review the definitions of ‘intimate’ versus ‘sexy’ again, don’t we?”

Dean chuckled softly and tiptoed his fingers across Talia’s little round belly and then made soft circles there with his fingertips. “She’s so beautiful,” he breathed.

“Yeah. She is,” Sam agreed in a wistful voice. 

Talia chose that moment to squirm and twist in Sam’s arm and scrunch her face up in preparation for an outburst. Dean reached for her. “Here, gimme. I think she needs to be burped.”

Sam passed her off and leaned back into the corner of the couch and watched Dean maneuver the tiny baby up onto his shoulder with practiced ease and pat her firmly on the back, murmuring to her all the while. “You’re really amazing at that, you know?”

“I should be. Used to do it with you.”

“Really?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“Sure. Dad was kind of a basket case for a while after Mom, so I helped take care of you. You know that, Sammy.”

Sam considered this. “Yeah, I guess so. I just never really thought about it in detail.”

“It’s like riding a bike. You never really forget.” 

Talia let out a loud, less than lady-like burp and Dean grinned. “That’s my girl,” he said, and shifted her down into the crook of his arm, holding his hand out to Sam for her bottle. “And who would want to forget how to do this. It’s kind of the most…gratifying thing in the world, don’t you think?”

Sam didn’t say anything, just sat back and watched Dean coax Talia to latch onto the bottle and take the rest of it before turning her back up on his shoulder and burping her again. When her eyes were starting to drift closed, Sam leaned forward and took hold of one of her little hands and kissed the back of it tenderly, then looked up at Dean through his dark lashes. 

“Are you happy, Dean?”

Dean gave him a momentarily incredulous look. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sam shrugged a little uncertainly. “Is this…everything you wanted?”

Dean scowled now and carefully moved Talia to his opposite shoulder so he could lean into his brother and get a good look in his face. “Sam. It’s more than I ever thought I’d get. We were gonna die young and bloody, or old and broken, remember? But look at us…we’re a family. We’ve got each other, and Talia. That’s a bigger slice of heaven than I thought was possible for someone like me, Sam.”

Sam’s face visibly relaxed and he leaned in to put his forehead against Dean’s. “Yeah. Ditto.”

Dean nudged Sam up. “C’mon. You need your beauty sleep and this one’s just about crashed again.”

Sam followed Dean back down the hall and watched from the doorway as he settled Talia back into her crib and leaned down to brush a kiss against her cheek. Never in all his life had Sam dreamed he’d be able to see his brother enjoy such domestic bliss. After all they had been through, all they had suffered, all they had lost, this…this was a reward beyond imagining. 

“Hey, you okay?”

Sam blinked and found Dean standing right in front of him. “Yeah.”

Dean stretched up just slightly and pressed a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth. “Back to bed with you.” 

He tugged Sam along behind him and pressed him back onto the pillows, settling down and pulling him over into his arms before he tugged the blankets up over them both. He felt Sam’s warm breath on his skin as he sighed contentedly and dropped off toward sleep. 

 

“Hey guys!”

“Hey, Jo! We’re in the kitchen!” Sam called, sidestepping around Dean who was stirring eggs in the frying pan and holding Talia on his hip turned out toward the room so she was safe from the heat. She had both fists in her mouth and was grinning as Dean talked her through how to create the perfect omelet.

“Dean, she’s three months old,” Sam chided with a huge smile.

Dean stuck his tongue out at his brother. “She could be the next Julia Childs. You don’t know.”

Sam shook his head and waved a hand in greeting as Jo came into the kitchen toting a cooler pack on her shoulder. 

“How’s it hangin’ boys,” she said in her barely southern drawl. She unzipped the cooler and pulled open the freezer, depositing several small bags of milky frozen liquid on the shelf. “Brought you guys extra supplies. Brian and I are going out of town for the weekend, so…”

“Oh, really?” Sam asked, plating several slices of toast and spreading them with jam. “Where are you off to?”

“Thought we’d check out Vegas,” Jo said. “Last time I was there, I was ganking a ghoul. Thought I might try the tamer nightlife this time.” She turned to Dean. “You trying to teach my little dumplin’ how to cook again? Come here, baby girl. Let me see how these big dumbos have been mistreating you.”

Jo started to take Talia from Dean’s hip, but his arm instinctively tightened on her and he frowned. Jo looked up at him, smile fading out at the edges when she saw the confused horror in his eyes. “Dean? I was just kidding?”

Talia was huffing in a preparatory burst of tears, sensing her father’s sudden distress. Jo took her into her arms. “Hey sweetheart, what’s up with your papa, huh? Dean, you okay?

The world twisted. His stomach hurt. Dean saw Jo in front of him, but she was pale as a ghost and covered in blood. “No,” he breathed. “No, that’s not right…”

“Dean?”

Dean swayed, spatula slipping from his nerveless fingers, overbalancing on the edge of the skillet and tumbling to the floor. Jo put out a hand. 

“Sam!” she yelled.

Sam was already moving, attention turned by the clatter of utensils hitting the floor. He caught Dean under the arms as he started to go over. “Dean! Hey, man, I got you. I got you.” Sam pulled Dean against him and helped him to a chair that Jo hurriedly pulled from under the table. “Come on. Sit down. Breathe. Just breathe, Dean.”

Sam dropped down to his knees and cupped Dean’s face between his hands, leaning in close, he whispered, “Hey, you okay?”

Dean pressed a hand to his stomach. The sharp pain was gone, but the memory of it still clung. He nodded into Sam’s huge, warm palms. “Yeah. I’m good.”

Talia was crying good and hard now, and Jo bounced her gently, cooing to her softly to calm her. “Hey, dumpling, it’s okay. You’re papa’s okay.”

Dean nodded again and Sam released him reluctantly, letting his straighten up. Dean looked up at Jo and held out his arms. “Let me have her.”

Jo turned Talia over without hesitation, and Dean tucked her in close to his chest, kissing her soft hair and nuzzling her. “I’m sorry sweetie-bug. Papa didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked up at Jo, letting out a sigh of relief that she looked warm and alive and clean of any bloody gore. He started to smile apologetically, but it caught on something and he frowned again, looking from Jo to Talia and back again. “She looks just like you, Jo.”

Jo frowned this time, passing an uneasy look to Sam. “Well, yes…I suppose she would since I’m her mom?”

Dean’s face fell, going pale as a sheet. He looked stricken. “But I thought…?”

Sam took over here, trying to keep his voice even in spite of the fear building in his gut. “Dean, Jo is Talia’s surrogate. You know that.” He took Dean’s hand in his, shifting so he was more directly in Dean’s line of sight. “We wanted a baby. Remember? Jo offered to carry her for us.”

“Right. Right…” Dean breathed. The tension drained from his muscles and the color crept back into his face. “Of course. God, Sam…I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think maybe I’m coming down with something.” He rubbed at his stomach again. “I just feel…weird.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Sam soothed. He lifted a hand to run it through Dean’s hair, and then cupped the back of Talia’s head, kissing her lightly. “You’re tired. We both are. You need to relax, and get something to eat. If you feel like it?”

Dean hesitated a second then nodded. His stomach was probably bothering him because it was almost lunch and he hadn’t had anything to eat yet. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Let me see what I can do to rescue these eggs.” Sam stood up, forcing a relaxed smile. “Jo, can you finish up the toast. Bacon’s in the microwave. Would you like some? We’ve got plenty.”

Jo picked up Sam’s abandoned knife and started slathering jam and butter on the cooling toast. “Sure. I can stay for a bit. Thanks.”

Dean held Talia in his lap while they all ate. He and Sam took turns feeding her tiny bits of soft scrambled egg and cheese from the tips of their forks. Jo regaled them on her and Brian’s plans for their weekend in Vegas, and by the time they were mopping up the last of the eggs with crusts of toast, Dean had all but forgotten his hallucinatory episode with Jo and his phantom stomach troubles.

Jo and Sam cleared up the dishes, and Sam suggested Dean take Talia into the library and get started on the second chapter of the Latvian spell book Sam had gone to Montana for last month. 

When Dean was well out of earshot, Jo turned to Sam with an urgent look. “Sam, what the hell is going on?”

Sam turned on the hot water and let it run for a minute before putting the skillet in the sink to wash. “I’m not sure, Jo. He had an…episode? Last night when Talia woke up for her last feeding. Something in the nursery set him off. I heard him over the monitor, but he said he was fine.”

“I don’t know, Sam. Maybe you should go diving for hex bags,” Jo said suspiciously.

Sam smiled. “I don’t think it’s hex bags. This place is pretty well protected, supernaturally and otherwise. No one’s gotten in here without us knowing about it.”

“What then? Because this isn’t normal Dean.”

“I know,” Sam sighed and scrubbed at the skillet. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe he is just coming down with a bug. It looks like his stomach is bothering him, and you know about how well his takes being sick.”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. Like when he had sympathetic morning sickness? Holy shit…”

Sam laughed. That had been an interesting couple of months, and though the doctors claimed Dean had just contracted a mild flu virus, it had started, stopped, and lasted for exactly the same period of time that Jo had suffered through bouts of vomiting morning, noon, and night. Sam hadn’t really believed it at first, giving Dean his usual hard time, but as the days had drug into weeks and Dean had mimicked all the same symptoms Jo was, Sam had taken it a little more seriously and very subtly injected Dean’s diet and daily routine with things to help calm the nausea and curb the vomiting. 

After that, he was terrified that Dean would have sympathetic labor pains as well. Fortunately, beyond waking up about thirty seconds before Jo called them to say she was on her way to the hospital, and declaring that Talia was on her way before Sam had a chance to answer the phone, Dean had stayed in the free and clear on that count.

“So, is Billy with Brian today?” Sam asked, turning the subject away from Dean for the moment until he had time to think about it more.

“They went shooting this morning and then he’s gong to take him to my mom’s after lunch.”

The echo of someone pounding on the bunker’s heavy iron front door brought Sam’s head up. “Speaking of your mom…I think she’s here to collect her other grandchild.”

“I got it!” Dean called from the front room.

Sam wiped his hands on a towel and went out to meet Bobby and Ellen as they came down the stairs.

Bobby was already in baby mode, holding out his arms eagerly for Talia who was reaching for him with excited little squeals. “How’s my best little girl?” he said, cuddling her close and rubbing his soft beard across her cheek.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Ellen teased, leaning in to give Talia a kiss. “Hey, Dean, how’re you boys doin’?”

“Good, Ellen. Real good—.” Dean froze mid-sentence as the sound of a hound baying echoed in his ears. He cringed, hands automatically patting for a weapon that he hadn’t worn in years.

“Dean?” Ellen reached out a hand. “Everything all right?”

Sam came across the floor in three long strides and pulled Dean against him. “Dean, come on. Enough’s enough. You need to sit down.”

Sam pulled Dean into the den and forced him onto the couch. Ellen and Bobby followed, frowning in concern. Jo stood in the door, bags dangling from her hands, looking guilty.

“Uh, Sam, I need to—.”

“Go, Jo,” Sam said, smiling tightly. “It’s fine. I’ll take care of him. Don’t you worry. Enjoy your weekend, okay?”

“Sure.” She sounded less than certain. 

“I mean it. You promise,” Sam insisted.

“Yeah, okay,” Jo said. “Hey, Mom, we’ll see you and Bobby in a few hours with Billy.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” Ellen said, smiling at her daughter and waving as she left before turning back to Sam.

“Sam, what’s going on?”

Sam said nothing, just pulled Dean more tightly against him as his trembling increased. Dean’s eyes were wild as they darted around the room like he was trying to find something. He cupped Dean’s jaw in one hand and thumbed his cheekbone gently, making murmuring nonsense sounds. Slowly, Dean seemed to still and quiet, eyes drifting closed until he collapsed against Sam’s shoulder with a bone deep shudder.

Bobby passed Talia, who was looking distressed again and twisting to keep her eyes on Dean, over to Ellen and then dropped down on one knee beside Dean, pushing his hand over the younger man’s hair.

“Son, you all right?”

Dean cracked an eye and took a deep heaving breath. “Yeah, I just heard…”

“What?” Sam coaxed. “What did you hear?”

Dean licked his lips, eyes squeezing shut again. “Hell hounds.”

Bobby looked sharply up at Sam who just shook his head in bewilderment. “Dean? Son? Is there anything we need to know about?”

Dean looked confused for a moment and then a shadow of his brash attitude fell back over his features. “What? No! Hell, no. I learned my lesson.”

Bobby sighed in relief. Even knowing such a thing was impossible now, Bobby was well aquatinted with how efficient the Winchester boys were at making the impossible possible. It was just asking to have your ass handed to you if you made any kind of assumptions when it came to these brothers.

“Okay then.” He looked back at Sam. “How long has this been going on?”

“Just today, as far as I know,” Sam said, still stroking Dean’s hair as he continued to rest his forehead on Sam’s broad collarbone. “Maybe last night?”

Bobby crouched down further to try and look Dean in the face and squeezed at his shoulder. “Anything you need to talk about, son?”

Dean rolled his head against Sam. “No. Not really. I just—have a bug or something. It’s throwing me off. Or—I don’t know—maybe it’s PTSD after all these years.” He huffed a dry laugh and straightened up, pushing Sam’s hand gently away. “I’ll be fine. I think Sam’s right. I just need a full night’s sleep.”

“Well, at least that we can help with,” Ellen said. “Sam, you have Talia’s bag packed?”

“Yeah, it’s in the nursery,” Sam said.

Dean glanced at Sam questioningly. “What’s going on?”

“Ellen and Bobby are taking Talia for the weekend.”

“Why?” Dean asked, looking suddenly nervous. Talia had not been away from him or Sam for more than a couple hours since her birth. 

“Because it’s someone’s birthday,” Sam said with a sly smile.

Dean groaned and rolled his eyes. “Sam…”

“I’m taking you out. Like it or not. It’s been three months since we had a nice dinner out with just the two of us,” Sam said in a tone that brooked no arguments. He caved at the last, though, and looked earnestly into Dean’s face. “Unless you’re not feeling up for it, which I completely understand, and we can do a raincheck.”

Dean considered a moment. He stared down the hall in the direction Ellen had gone to gather Talia’s bag and drummed nervous fingers on his knee. Then he thought about how it was probably just stress causing all these little incidents, and if he could get a couple days of just him and Sam lazing around and napping…and maybe screwing and snacking and napping and then screwing some more…well, that would probably cure all his ills. 

Sam saw the minute Dean’s mind turned onto the idea, and it wasn’t because of the high probability that Sam would be treating him to a burger and pie at his favorite diner in town. It had a lot more to do with what would happen after that. Sam grinned, momentarily forgetting about Bobby and let the tip of his tongue flick out to lick at his bottom lip before drawing it enticingly between his teeth. Dean’s eyelids dropped immediately and Sam didn’t need to look down to know that Dean’s jeans had suddenly become a bit too snug for comfort.

Bobby cleared his throat, pushing up off his knee. “Well, I’m thinking you can’t be too bad off if you can still go…you know… _there._ ”

Sam and Dean both turned innocent looks on him before folding over in howls of laughter a moment later. 

“Idgits,” Bobby swore.

 

Dean forked a huge bite of lemon meringue pie and wrapped his lips around it, slid the fork out slowly, eyes closing in relish as the sweet/sour taste bloomed on his tongue and made his salivary glands work over time at the back of his mouth. He poked his tongue out to catch a little glob of meringue at the corner and then ran the tip over his bottom lip and lifted his eyes to look across the table at Sam who had paused, slack jawed, with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. 

“You know, Sammy,” Dean said, lifting another bite on his fork to examine the stiff white fluff pillowed on top of creamy yellow cradled in flaky brown crust. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say pie is proof there really is a God, and he loves us very much.”

Sam gulped a breath and ducked behind his coffee to hide a smirk, head tilting a little to the side in ambiguous agreement. “If you say so, Dean.”

“Seriously, though, man,” Dean said, setting his fork down and reaching across the table to cover Sam’s hand. “This was real nice. Best birthday present ever.”

“It’s just a burger and pie, Dean.”

“Hey,” Dean said, forking another bite. “After suffering through your amateur cooking skills and all that green crap you keep piling on my plate at home? This is paradise.”

“It’s healthy for you,” Sam rebutted, “and at least I can cook without frying something.”

Dean laughed. “Dude, your cooking sucks.”

“It does not suck. I—.” Sam stopped suddenly when Dean’s fork clattered to his plate. “Dean?”

His face had gone pale again and sweat broke out in little beads on his brow. Sam was up and around the table in a second. 

“Dean? Dean!” Sam grabbed his shoulders, held him tight as he hunched over in pain. “Dean, what’s going on? You’ve got to talk to me!”

Dean struggled to take a breath. The first one shuddered in and out, tripping over the pain in his stomach, but the second came a little easier, and then the third. “Sam?” he finally managed.

Sam sagged in relief. “That’s it. Come on. We’re getting your pie to go, and I’m taking you home. You’re sick. You need to rest.”

“I’m not sick, Sam,” Dean protested, sitting back up, but not letting go of Sam’s hand. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah, you keep saying,” Sam grumbled. “We need to get you checked out. I don’t know what this is, but we need to do something about it.”

“Seriously, Sam. I’m fine,” Dean said. He straightened up and took a deep breath. “I’m good.”

Sam looked on the verge of tears, though. He was confused and worried. He bit into the inside of his cheek to try and keep from ranting at his bull-headed brother.

Thirty-eight years of experience had given Dean a sixth sense in detecting the onset of the bitch-face, so he put up his hands in surrender and said, “You win. Let’s go. But I want my pie. And an extra piece.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but some of the tension drained out of him and he flagged down their waitress.

The drive home was quiet. Sam sat with his face pointedly turned to the road ahead but casting continual furtive glances in Dean’s direction. A whole pie sat up on the dash that Sam had ordered when Dean went to the bathroom before they left the diner. He was still worried, but as Dean kept insisting, he seemed just fine now.

“Hey,” Dean said, changing hands on the wheel and reaching across the space. “Stop worrying.”

“I’m not worrying,” Sam said, but he immediately slipped his hand into Dean’s, taking advantage of this rare offer of casual affection, and wound his fingers tightly with Dean’s.

“Sam, you can’t lie to me.” Dean sighed. “Look, I’m a little spooked, too. It’s weird…like everything is just kind of…off? But it’s okay, and I can just ignore it, but then something triggers a stronger reaction and everything goes sideways.”

“Well, then we need to figure out what’s triggering it,” Sam said firmly.

Dean shrugged a little. “I don’t know, Sam. Maybe it is some kind of delayed PTSD. I mean, you and me? We didn’t exactly deal with normal shit from day one, you know? So, maybe all the stress lately is just setting off what I’ve always been able to keep a handle on before.”

Sam flinched almost imperceptibly and his stomach tightened up. Dean felt the infinitesimal tug of muscles through their joined hands and glanced across the car. “Hey now,” he said sternly. “Don’t you go thinking that.”

Sam wouldn’t look at him, just raised his chin in a stubborn jerk. “Thinking what?”

Dean tugged back against Sam’s withdrawing hand and pulled it in to trap it against his chest. It wasn’t a reach for Sam’s long monkey arms, but it did put him at a bit of an odd angle. Dean didn’t care, though. He needed Sam to be real clear on this. 

“That I’m having second thoughts about Talia.”

Sam’s breath hiccuped in his effort to bite back tears. “But if she’s stressing you out… and I was the one who pushed so hard—.”

“Sam. Sam! Stop it.” Dean squeezed Sam’s hand, hard enough that skin bit against bone. “You know I wanted her just as much as you. I knew exactly what we were getting into. I helped raise you, remember? I knew it was going to be work, and stress, and there will be hard times ahead; probably a lot of swearing, tears, and I’ll bet some shotguns get involved at some point when she starts dating.” This got a sharp laugh from Sam. Dean smiled and raised Sam’s hand to his lips to kiss his knuckles. “But we decided this together, and I am so good with that. I don’t care if she drives me certifiably insane. She’s worth it.”

Sam slid across the seat and buried his face between Dean’s shoulder and the warm leather behind it. Dean could tell he was crying, but it was okay. Sam had been just as tired and stressed recently as Dean was. Dean swiped his lips over Sam’s knuckles again and this time let the tip of his tongue trace the grooves and scars there. He felt Sam’s crying interrupted on a hitch of indrawn breath at contact. He smiled.

This little reprieve for his birthday may be just what the doctor ordered for both of them.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex and things coming to a head...(no, that one...)

They tumbled through the bunker door a tangle of limbs and scrabbling hands. 

Dean had hold of Sam’s belt buckle and Sam’s hands were driving up under Dean’s jacket to shove it off his shoulders. Dean kicked the door shut with his foot and slammed Sam up against it, hand dropping lower to curl over the bulge in Sam’s jeans.

“Little anxious are we?” he teased.

Sam succeeded in wrestling Dean’s jacket off despite it meaning Dean had to remove his stroking hand from Sam’s thickening erection for the space of a few seconds, and whispered in between mashing his mouth to Dean’s, “You might say…yeah.”

Dean grinned into the kiss and canted his head to drive his tongue into Sam’s hot mouth, deeper and more thoroughly scoping out the soft wetness there. Sam still tasted like that fancy after dinner coffee he’d drunk and it was a nice compliment to the hint of lemon still hanging on from Dean’s pie.

Sam tried to talk around Dean plunging his tongue past Sam’s teeth again and again. “Dean…if we leave…the pie in the car…it’ll freeze.”

“Fuck it,” Dean said.

Sam shivered and smiled. “Me first.”

Dean growled deep in his chest and pushed Sam harder up against the door, yanking at Sam’s button fly and sinking his hand down around his hot, swollen flesh. “We’ll just see about that.”

Sam’s knees wobbled and Dean pressed up against him, wedging his thigh in between Sam’s to steady him, putting pressure on the hand that was palming him through his thin silk boxers.

“Silk, huh?” Dean breathed, swiping his tongue along Sam’s bottom lip. “Nice.”

“Special occasion,” Sam gasped as Dean curved his fingers down and lifted Sam’s balls, stroking them from underneath. “Jesus, Dean…I don’t think…”

“Yeah, me neither,” Dean rolled his hips so Sam could more thoroughly feel the hard ridge of Dean’s cock through his jeans.

Sam reached down a hand and cupped the throbbing shaft. “Shit. That must hurt.”

Dean dipped down to nip at Sam’s throat. “Oh, yeah. Wanna do something about that for me?”

Sam grinned up at the ceiling as Dean locked his mouth on the sensitive skin at the base of his throat and sucked. His knees almost gave out. He grabbed Dean’s collar, hauled him forward, and then spun them both so that Dean’s back was to the door. Then Sam slid down to his knees and without preamble, tugged down the zipper of Dean’s jeans, wrestled them down low on his hips and locked his mouth around Dean’s dick.

Dean banged his head against the heavy door as Sam’s lips sank down the length of his cock, wet and soft and hot. Sam’s tongue was working the underside of him, alternately massaging the big pulsing vein and tracing the intricate ridges with the tip.

“Sam. Sammy…shit!” Dean gasped as Sam suddenly swallowed him whole and sucked hard, hollowing his cheeks and flattening his tongue to push and stroke, rolling it against Dean’s engorged head at the back of his throat. “Sam, I…”

Dean felt himself lifting upward, headed for a high and mighty climax at dizzying speeds. He knotted his fingers into the hair at the back of Sam’s head with one hand and flailed with the other for the railing to hang onto and hold him to earth when he started to come in Sam’s hot mouth.

Sam swallowed again and again, pulling Dean deeper, increasing the suction on his sensitive flesh until he felt Dean’s hips roll and buck forward and then there was the spurt of hot salty cum at the back of his throat. 

“Jesus Christ…Sammy!” Dean shouted, hand locking around the iron rail, the other fisting tight in Sam’s hair, while his body emptied itself in huge, shattering pulses.

Dean fought to catch his breath a minute later as Sam pulled off of him slow and easy and held him steady while he tried to get his legs to support him again.

Dean unwound his fingers from Sam’s hair and let his hand come forward to cup Sam’s face. “Sam, you have…the best mouth. I swear.”

Sam grinned, eyes still alive with desire. He pushed off his knees and molded himself up against Dean, deliberately pushing his still burgeoning erection into the hollow of Dean’s hip. He leaned in and kissed Dean’s mouth slow and wet, letting Dean revel in the leftover taste of himself on Sam’s lips. 

“That’s up for debate,” Sam said, pulling back from the kiss. “I think yours is better.”

“Mmmm, let’s see about that.” Dean jerked at his jeans enough to get them back on his hips so they wouldn’t slide down as he shoved Sam away and then dragged him down the stairs and off down the hallway to their bedroom. “You. Bedroom. Now.” Dean stopped long enough to plant another driving kiss on Sam, licking away the last musky bit of himself from his mouth. “I want you naked on that bed in thirty seconds.”

Sam grinned crazily and started stripping off his shirt and t-shirt and dropping them as they stumbled down the hall. Dean followed suit, belt whipping out of his pants, shirts sliding to the floor, even toeing off his boots as he came through the door and kicking them to the side. 

Sam shimmied out of his jeans and boxers and sprawled himself back on the bed in one smooth movement. Dean stood over him, jeans still on but undone, looking down at Sam like he was the most precious and amazing thing he’d ever seen.

Sam’s brow furrowed a little as Dean just kept standing there looking at him. “Dean?”

Dean hooked his thumbs in his waistband and shed his jeans, then put a knee on the edge of the bed beside Sam’s thigh and leaned up over him. “Beautiful, Sam. My beautiful, beautiful Sammy. Never gonna give you up.”

Sam was about to ask why Dean thought he’d ever have to when Dean’s mouth was on his again, slower, but no less forceful, no less full of desire. Sam lifted into it, reaching for Dean’s hips, trying to drag him down. Dean wouldn’t budge, though. He just kept kissing Sam until Sam could barely breathe anymore and was desperate for some kind of contact to sooth the painful throbbing of his heavy cock.

Dean finally pulled away and looked downward at the long, thick curve of Sam’s erect flesh jerking against his belly and smiled devilishly, licking his lips slow, getting them all wet and pink for Sam. “Want me, Sammy? Want my mouth on you?”

“Fuck yes!” Sam nearly shouted, hands going to Dean’s shoulders to push him downward.

Dean complied, trailing kisses and licks across Sam’s chest as his went, biting at the tightened nubs of his nipples, and then breathing a hot line down his belly following the trail of soft dark hair to Sam’s cock. Sam pushed upward, rolling his hips desperately against the mattress. 

“I got you, Sammy. Gonna take care of you so good,” Dean breathed across Sam’s flesh, making it tighten and harden even further. Sam whimpered and a single pearly drop of cum squeezed out the slit and Dean dipped his head to catch it on the tip of his tongue. “Taste so good, Sam. So good.”

Dean swirled his tongue around Sam’s swollen head, licking under the ridge with the tip, flicking across the sensitive slit, coaxing out another drop of cum. Dean moaned. “That’s it, baby boy. Give me more. Just a drop.” Dean scooped up the drop on the tip of his tongue against, rolled it in his mouth. “Oh, yeah. Just wanna keep tasting you, Sam. Just a little at a time, baby boy. Just a little drop. Come on. Squeeze me out just a little more.”

“Guh…” Sam choked on a groan, hips rising full off the bed to try and meet Dean’s dirty talking mouth, and leaked another drop of cum that Dean immediately flicked away with the tip of his tongue. Sam thought he was going to go insane with need. “Dean…please!”

Dean settled his elbows on either side of Sam’s hips and spanned Sam’s ribs with his hands so he could hold him, keeping control. “Wanna keep tasting you, Sam. Wanna lick you dry one drop at a time. Just one. Can you do that? Gimme just one drop, Sam?”

Sam ground his teeth and moaned as he somehow forced himself to squeeze just one more drop from the slit of his throbbing cock.

Dean dropped his head, licked it away. “Fuck, Sam…” he said in wonderment, voice dropping low. “That is amazing. You are fucking amazing.”

Sam twisted on the mattress beneath Dean, head rolling back and forth, jaw clenched. “Dean, please…I can’t. I need to come. God, I need to come! Please…it hurts so bad.”

Dean flushed at Sam’s pleas and felt his belly clench in sympathy. “Okay, Sammy. Okay. I got you. I’m sorry, baby boy. Didn’t mean to make you hurt.”

Dean lick his lips wet again and then opened wide and slid down on Sam’s thick length in one go, tongue flattening, curving, cupping Sam’s cock as it throbbed in his mouth. He sucked and swallowed and Sam jerked up off the bed, shoulders the only thing touching the mattress, pounding into the back of Dean’s throat so that he could barely breathe. In seconds, Sam was coming long and hard, shouting with each pulse of hot cum that fountained out of him. 

Dean held Sam through his long, rippling aftershocks, holding him in his mouth until Sam had gone soft and warm and then he came off of him gently, licking his lips. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth as he crawled up the bed to stretch out beside Sam, throwing an arm across his chest and crooking his knee across his hips. Sam settle further into the mattress under Dean’s warm weight and sighed in sleepy pleasure. 

“Yeah,” he finally said muzzily. “Your mouth is way better. In… _so_ many ways.”

Dean rumbled a low laugh and squeezed Sam against him. “Call it a draw.”

Sam nodded and turned his head to bury his nose in Dean’s soft bristly hair. “Love you.”

Dean reached across Sam to grab the edge of the comforter and drag it over the two of them before settling more tightly into Sam’s side. He pressed a kiss to Sam’s shoulder. “Love you, too, Sammy.”

 

They slept the whole night through dead to the world. Another exodus of fallen angels from Heaven probably couldn’t have woken them, and they went ahead and kept sleeping well into the next morning.

Sam as usual was the first to get his eyes open, sticky with too much sleep, body drained and trembly from the amazing sex the night before. He wormed his way out from under the comforter, trying to keep Dean covered, and padded to the bathroom in the chill air. He brushed his teeth, but opted for coffee and food before attempting a shower when his knees refused to re-solidify from the jellied state Dean had left them in last night. 

Sam grinned at the memory, pulled on a t-shirt and lounge pants and kissed Dean’s hair ever so lightly before making his way to the kitchen.

Dean woke up not too long after when the absence of Sam’s body heat started to register on his senses. He poked his head from under the comforter and squinted around. The smell of strong, black coffee found its way down the hall along with the sizzle hiss of bacon being dropped in grease.

“He does love me,” Dean murmured with a smile and rolled out of bed.

Sam grinned over his shoulder as Dean came into the kitchen still rubbing at eyes that refused to open all the way with hair flattened on one side from sleeping in one spot all night.

“Morning,” Sam said. He reached across the counter and poured fresh coffee into a waiting mug and offered it to Dean while still pushing the bacon around the bottom of the skillet so it wouldn’t burn. “Coffee?”

“God bless you, Sam,” Dean said and took the cup in both hands as he settled a hip against the counter. 

Sam flipped the bacon and pulled a wry smile. “Would if he could, I’m sure.”

Dean rolled his eyes. He stood sipping at his coffee staring around the kitchen while Sam turned the bacon one more time and then lifted it to a paper towel lined plate. He shoved it in the oven and cracked eggs into the still snapping bacon grease.

“How’re you feeling this morning?” Sam ventured.

Dean nodded. “Good.” He glanced over and caught Sam’s questioning look. “No weirdness. Promise.”

“Good. Maybe it was just lack of sleep.”

“Yeah, that’d be a well deserved easy fix.”

“Hey don’t jinx it,” Sam said. “Fried or scrambled?”

“Scrambled.” Dean moved across the kitchen to the door, absently looking down the hall, straining his hearing without realizing what he was listening for.

Sam smiled softly, pausing in swirling the yoke and whites together in the skillet. “She’s with Ellen and Bobby, Dean.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So, stop listening for her,” Sam said.

“Habit, I guess.” Dean shrugged and sat down at the island. “I think I miss her.”

“Of course you do,” Sam said, pushing the eggs off onto plates and retrieving the bacon. “I do, too. But let’s just enjoy the day, huh? She’s being spoiled silly at this exact moment, I am absolutely positive. So, she’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“‘M not worried,” Dean grumped, taking a large bite of eggs.

“Sure,” Sam said teasingly, sitting across from Dean with his own plate. They ate in silence for a few minutes until Sam looked over a little tentatively at his brother. “So…I was thinking.”

“Yeah, that never ends well,” Dean smirked.

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.” Dean grinned around a strip of bacon. 

“It’s going to be Talia’s first Christmas this year.”

Dean kept chewing. “Yeah.”

“So, I thought…maybe a tree?” Sam said carefully. “There’s a tree farm about twenty miles from here. We could get a few decorations. Maybe a wreath?”

Dean smiled lopsidedly. “Sounds like a good idea.” Sam sighed in relief and Dean wrinkled his brow. “Why? Did you think I wouldn’t want to?”

“Well, I know you’ve kind of kept Christmas real low key on the count of me and how I’ve never been too keen on it, but I don’t want to deprive Talia even though we never really had much of a Christmas while we were growing up.” Dean’s expression tightened imperceptibly at Sam’s words, and his finger looped into the cord around his neck, running down to meet the brass amulet grown warm from being next to his skin—the amulet Sam had given him all those years ago when Dean had tried for the hundredth time to take up the slack where John had dropped it. Among the shit load of razor sharp, bloody memories Dean carried around, that had been a sweet bright spot to cling to; but apparently not for Sam.

Sam’s eyes widened briefly, tracking Dean’s hand, too late in realizing how his innocent admission had sounded to Dean’s ears . “I’m sorry, Dean, I didn’t mean it to sound like—.”

Dean laid down his fork and dropped the amulet. He pushed back from the counter and stood up. “I’m gonna go get a shower.”

Sam watched Dean go, a cold nugget of regret burning through the bottom of his stomach. He pushed the rest of his breakfast away and looked after Dean’s retreating back. 

 

Dean stood under the hot spray of the shower letting the water sluice over the back of his head and run into his face and down his chest and stomach. He had one hand propped against the tiles and the other was ticking a fingernail over the sharp horns of the worn amulet he’d had around his neck for nearly thirty years except for that short stint that Castiel had taken it to try and locate God. Why Bobby had been in possession of such an artifact and why he would have given it to Sam as a gift for John was something Dean still wondered about. He also wondered if his dad may have known a lot more than he told them, and if Sam’s gifting the amulet to Dean instead might have been a tripping point in time when things went sideways for the Winchesters three onto a road less traveled. 

It didn’t matter anymore. Except that it did. 

Dean lifted his head up and let the spray hit him full in the face for a few seconds before pushing his hands up over his face and through his hair and turning his back to the tile and resting against it with his shoulders. 

Talia had been a conscious decision on both his and Sam’s part to leave all their past garbage behind. They’d made a pretty good place for themselves here after Heaven and Hell closed up shop and the hunting died down on what limited population of monsters was still left out there; but no matter how they tried to make it work, there was a lifetime of things said and unsaid between the two of them that still made the silences in between too damn thorny.

Jo had Billy by then and the way Sam doted over him when he was a baby made Dean recall what it had been like to hold Sam in his arms all those years ago. How Sam had cried out in the night and John had been too damn drunk to hear or too depressed to get off of whatever piece of furniture he’d crashed over; and Dean had crawled out of bed and pulled Sam from his travel crib and carried him back to his own bed and curled around him close to the wall to keep him from rolling anywhere in his sleep. At first it had just been a way to keep Sam quiet so that John wouldn’t wake because John awake in the  middle of the night meant snotty sobbing and another fifth of Jack, but after a while Dean wasn’t able to sleep unless he had Sam’s warm little body tucked up against him. And if John or Bobby had had any kind of opinion on the subject when this little ritualistic sleeping arrangement continued between the boys until Sam left for Stanford, well, they kept it to themselves. 

Dean had been around for Sam’s first words, too, and his first steps. It was Dean Sam had asked advise of on getting a date to his first sixth grade dance, and Dean who had explained the ‘wet dream’ the morning Sam woke all sweaty and breathless in a pool of sticky fluid. Little had Sam known then that Dean had rolled out of bed twenty minutes prior to go jerk off in the bathroom because the little thrusts of Sam’s hips and tiny moans escaping his lips while he worked off his passion in dreamland had been making Dean so hard it hurt. Years later Sam had confessed to Dean being the object of that particular dream.

Watching Sam with baby Billy and thinking about how good it had felt to Dean’s heart to see Sam’s solar smile light the room when Dean came back from school, or an errand, or a hunt with their dad, like Dean was little Sam’s whole entire world and then some, was a feeling Dean suddenly very much wanted again and didn’t want Sam to miss out on.

So, after exhausting a dozen avenues and a years worth of research and investigation in trying to adopt, Sam had finally spilled out his despair of their ever having a real family to Jo and Brian over one too many beers one night. Jo had rolled her eyes and offered up her services before Sam had quit talking. Brian had been a little harder to convince, especially when Jo nixed the idea of artificial insemination as expensive and chancy. She opted for the hands on approach, sleeping with both Dean and Sam alternately until a test a few weeks after a particularly vigorous night of menage-et-trois had confirmed Sam and Dean’s dream come true.

During Jo’s pregnancy and the three  months since Talia’s birth, the past had stayed in the past, buried under a flurry of preparations and happy anxiety over her imminent arrival. Sam and Dean come to a kind of silent agreement that Talia was their new chapter, their fresh start, and the life she would know would have nothing to do with the past that they were finally vowing to put to bed forever.

Funny how things just couldn’t stay asleep that long. 

Dean dropped the amulet against his chest. The weight felt…wrong somehow. After all these years of wearing it, feeling naked without it, panicking the few times it had gone out of his possession when he was in a hospital, it somehow felt wrong now. Maybe it was Sam’s reminiscing in the kitchen that was doing it. He hadn’t meant anything by it and Dean knew that, but the idea that Sam’s memories of his childhood were still so heavy with the dark and the bad that he was unable to readily recall the good moments made Dean’s heart hurt. It also made him nervous about how Talia would one day think of him. If he had screwed up so badly with Sammy, what was Talia going to be able to hold against him in the future?

Dean shoved off the wall, reaching to slap the faucet off, but he was stopped by a sharp pain in his stomach. He gasped, fist going up to press under his sternum, catching himself on the wall with his other hand. He panted hard, trying to breath through the pain, until it faded as suddenly at it had come. He tried to straighten, but the axis of the world had changed coordinates on him again, and he slammed into the shower wall with one shoulder.

_Be as mad as you want, big brother. I love you too damn much…_

Dean’s head jerked up. “Sam?”

Dean slapped off the water and shoved back the door, but Sam wasn’t in the room. The door was still closed.

_Your heart’s greatest desire must be in accord…if he wakes, he will die…_

Dean grabbed for a towel and pressed it against his face, holding his head for a moment, willing the thready voices away. Jesus. He really was cracking up. First, bouts of vertigo, then visual and auditory hallucinations, and now voices in his head? 

He stumbled out of the shower, still feeling like the world was tracking a micro second behind him, his movements sluggish like he was in deep water. He toweled off, found clothes and yanked them on, and then dropped onto the edge of the bed to try and reorient himself.

The bunker was safe. There was no place safer. It was warded against…everything. So hex bags, spells, and curses were out of the question, especially given that Charlie had upgraded and beefed their security yet again on her last trip back when Talia was born. So whatever was causing this was in Dean’s own head.

And after he’d just told Sam everything was all right.

Yeah, too easy a fix for any Winchester. There was definitely something wrong here, and he had to figure out what it was. 

He reached for his phone on the nightstand and pressed speed dial.

“Missin’ the little squirt already, huh?” Bobby’s cheerful voice came over the line. “Knew you two wouldn’t last a day.”

Dean cringed as another wave of vertigo pushed him to the side. Bobby’s voice on the line sounded good, too good, and it brought tears surging up to the surface. Why? Why the hell did it feel like some huge missing piece was reasserting itself in his damaged and broken heart?

“Dean? Hey, you there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Bobby,” Dean managed.

“Son, what’s wrong?” Bobby’s voice went instantly sharp. His old hunting voice. The voice that had anchored Dean and Sam both through so many years of their lives. The voice that had always been there for them.

“I—I need to talk to you, Bobby. To somebody. I think…” Dean folded over as another pain assaulted him. “I think something’s wrong with me.”

Dean could hear Bobby shoving at that tattered ball cap, rubbing his hand down over his bearded jaw. “Okay, son. You hold tight. I’ll come get you.”

“No. Don’t,” Dean said sharply. “I’ll come to you. I don’t want—want Sam to worry.”

“Dean…”

“Just…please.”

Bobby sighed, bone deep, and that was so familiar. Dean knew that sound. It was the one Bobby made when Dean was doing something the unnecessarily hard and stupid way. But Dean couldn’t have Sam getting worked up over this, not until he had a handle on what it was. He refused to believe that his daughter had anything to do with it, but Sam was still too uneasy with the idea that he’d forced Dean into something Dean didn’t really want—Sam being who Sam was, as always took it all onto his own shoulders.

“I’ll be there in a half hour,” Dean said tightly and dropped the line.

Sam was till in the kitchen, sitting head down over his plate of cold eggs when Dean managed to get his boots on and get down the hallway, tugging the entire time against the ‘off-ness’ that kept pushing back at him. He braced himself as casually as he could in the doorway.

“Hey, Sammy, I’m gonna go run a couple of errands, okay? Be back in a bit.”

Sam lifted his head, and Dean was pierced through by the red eyes and the tear tracks. He walked across the kitchen, inexorably drawn to Sam’s pain just like always, the need to make his little brother’s world all right again wiping away any discomfort or pain of his own. He pulled Sam into his arms and kissed the top of his head.

“Hey, now, don’t be like that,” Dean said softly into Sam’s hair. “I’m sorry, for acting like a horse’s ass, like always.”

Sam shook his head a little against Dean’s chest. “I did it. I was the one who made you think I couldn’t remember—.”

Sam’s voice cut off on a hiccup and restrained cry. Dean squeezed him tighter. “No. Now, come on. It’s  okay. We promised to let this shit go, and we’re gonna do it. It just probably isn’t going to be as easy as we might have thought, but we’re gonna do it. Now, you go clean up. I’m going out for just a bit, get us some stuff, but I’ll be back before you know it. Okay?”

Sam lifted his head, eyes a little less red, a little brighter now. He nodded, and Dean saw little six year old Sammy in his arms again, all upset over some little thing that Dean was making all right again just by being Dean, just by saying he would fix it, and Sam believed he could. Dean could fix the world. 

Dean sucked in a breath, feeling the room slide to the side again and resisting it. Sam, blessedly, didn’t seem to notice, and Dean pulled him up and pushed him gently toward the doorway.

“Scoot.”

“Don’t be too long,” Sam said, mischief already playing again at the corners of his watery smile. 

Dean rolled his eyes and groaned and ushered Sam out of the kitchen. When he had disappeared and Dean heard the door to the bathroom shut, he leaned over to catch himself against the counter, huffing out a held breath, face screwing up in pain. 

It was getting worse.

He made his way to the front door, grabbing his keys and coat, and headed for Bobby’s hoping against hope that they could find something to fix this and fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I took poetic liberty with Dean's birthday. Sorry to anyone whose reality that irked.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean makes his final choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An ENORMOUS thank you goes out to each and every one of you who is reading this story! I made 50K words and without all your comments, kudos, and support, I never would have been able to make it happen. THANK YOU SO MUCH! You all are fantastic! (And don't worry--I'm not gonna leave you hanging just 'cause I made the word mark :))

“Okay, here we go. Drink up,” Bobby said, handing down a tumbler with two fingers worth of dark amber liquid.

Dean automatically brought the glass to his lips, but when the sharp liquor smell hit his nostrils, his hands started to shake and he felt suddenly dizzy. He hesitated, staring into the glass. A hundred times Bobby had handed him a glass like this, a cure-all for whatever crisis was brewing at the moment, a salve for the most recent seeping wound, a way to block out the pain of loss or death. But this was wrong. Wrong like the weight of the amulet still hanging around his neck that had gotten heavier and heavier on the drive here.

Dean doubled over with a sharp hiss, and Bobby grabbed the drink from his hand before it could spill.

“Okay, maybe not,” Bobby said, setting both glasses on the table behind him and putting his hands on Dean’s shoulders. “Son, what in tarnation’s going on here? Talk to me.”

Dean breathed through the pain in his stomach, resisting the sudden nausea. And that was new, by the way. It faded quickly, though. Blessedly. Just like before. Just a flash, like a glimpse, and then the door slammed shut on it, and it was gone. He straightened up.

“Maybe just some water, huh?”

“Yup,” Bobby said, rising up to get a glass from the kitchen. 

Dean sipped at the water slowly when Bobby returned and then rubbed at his jaw, looking around the bright little house. The walls were painted a warm white that bounced back the sun from the large front windows that looked out on a nice ten acre plot of land littered with small thickets of trees and a huge quonset hut garage off to the side. It was like Bobby’s place in South Dakota, but had the distinct touch of Ellen about it. None of the dark worn woods or stacks and stacks of ancient tomes and scrolls. There were more discreet wardings that blended into the decor, but he expected that. No hunter ever forgot how important it was to have protection, no matter how safe things seemed at the moment.

“Bobby, I don’t know what’s going on,” Dean started slowly. “I’m fine and then I’m not. At least I was.”

“Was?”

“Yesterday it was just sporadic. Like flashes of a memory you can’t pin down, but…this morning I heard voices.”

“Voices?”

Dean set down his glass and pressed his hands against his mouth. “Yeah, voices. Sam’s and…someone else’s.”

“What did they say?” Bobby sat down at Dean’s knee.

“Sam said not to be mad at him, and the other voice said, if I wake up…I’ll die.”

“Jesus…” Bobby swore and took a swallow from his whisky glass.

Dean rubbed an absent hand at his stomach where the pain had focused. “I feel like…things aren’t quite right. This house. I know it, recognize it—you put your Christmas tree over in front of the window, and Ellen won’t let you bring your books out of the library to clutter up the place—but I swear I’ve never been here before. And this,” he pulled the amulet up and over his head, holding it in his palm and looking hard at it. “I know it’s mine. I know Sammy gave it to me and what it means to both of us. I know I wore it for years, never took it off, but…I shouldn’t have it anymore. It’s too heavy. It doesn’t feel right.” He curled his fingers around the warm brass and took a deep breath. “And then there’s Jo and Ellen…and you.”

Bobby frowned. “What about us?”

Dean shook his head uncertainly. “You…shouldn’t be here. I don’t think. I don’t know…” He gasped as another sharp pain erupted in his stomach. He pressed against it with his hand and tried to keep talking. “And then there’s this…God! Every time something feels off or wrong…or I start to…think about it too hard. It…shit! It hurts!”

Bobby grabbed his shoulders again as he pitched forward. “Dean, relax. Don’t fight it. Just breathe, son.”

Dean did as he was told, trying to blank his mind, to push all his questions back out of his mind, but they were too urgent, too demanding of answers. He was a Winchester, it was part of the family motto to sweep shit under the rug and ignore it, but not a problem like this—this wanted a solution. 

_If he wakes. He dies._

The pain doubled him over again, and if Bobby hadn’t been holding onto him, he would have gone into the floor. He tried to catch his breath, looked up at Bobby, face a collage of emotions. “Bobby…am I suppose to be here? Am I…dreaming?”

Bobby stared at Dean wide eyed for just a second before the younger man cried out and then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he dropped forward against Bobby’s chest.

“Holy fuck…” Bobby lifted Dean back into the chair and yanked his phone out of his pocket, dialing with shaking fingers.

“Bobby—?” Sam’s voice came on the other end.

“Sam, get your ass over here. Now.”

“What’s wrong, Bobby? Is it Talia? Dean’s not here. He went—,” Sam’s voice was rising in mild panic.

“He’s here,” Bobby said. “Passed out in my living room. You got to get here right now, Sam. I think…I think he may be dying.”

 

The phone slid out of Sam’s fingers and he didn’t even bother to retrieve it as he threw down the towels he’d been gathering up from the bedroom floor and sprinted for the front door, only just remembering to grab his jacket and the SUV keys on the way out.

Bobby was waiting at the door when Sam arrived bounding up the front steps three at a time. He shoved straight past Bobby and turned right, into the living room where Dean was laid out on the couch looking pale but otherwise fine, like he was just overtired and taking a nap. Sam took two huge steps to his side and dropped down on his knees.

Something hard jabbed in under his knee cap and he reached down to retrieved Dean’s amulet that had slipped from his hand when he passed out. Sam’s fingers curled around it and he brought his fist up to his mouth, cursing softly. “Damn it, Dean, I’m sorry.”

Bobby came into the room and sat down on the edge of a chair. Sam turned to him, eyes urgent. “What happened, Bobby?”

“He said…” Bobby shoved at his ball cap again, the nervous affection so familiar and unconscious. “He wasn’t makin’ much sense, Sam. He said things seemed ‘off.’ Like they just weren’t quite right. That amulet,” he gestured at Sam’s hand, “he said it felt too heavy, like he shouldn’t be wearin’ it anymore. He said he heard voices this morning.”

“Voices?” Sam scooted closer to Dean’s head, ran a hand through his hair and over his face. “What did they say?”

“Said if he woke up, he’d die.” Bobby fisted his hands briefly and then rubbed them across his thighs. “Sam, do you have any idea what the hell he’s talkin’ about?”

“Anything else?”

“His stomach. It was hurtin’ ‘im. Said the pain got worse whenever he tried to focus on the things that didn’t fit,” Bobby said. 

Sam’s hand slid down Dean’s body to rest on his stomach. He slipped the amulet away into his jeans pocket and put the other hand against Dean’s face. “Dean, why? Why couldn’t you just let me…? I thought… I thought we wanted the same things badly enough that it would work. I really did. I thought we would be enough. Together,” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. He folded over then, resting his cheek on Dean’s chest. “But I never was. Enough. I just wasn’t.”

 

_I never was. Enough…_

Dean groaned and opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back on what felt like warm, dry wood. The sun was high overhead, glaring out of a cloudless blue sky, and he could hear the gentle rhythmic lap of water. 

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean turned his head sharply at the voice. “Cas?” He sat up. “Cas, how the hell…? I thought you were locked up in Heaven with all the rest of the angels. How’re you doing this?”

“It’s a dream, Dean,” Castiel said. He looked around, smiling gently at the calm vista around him. “I find your dreams very surprising, actually. Considering the violence and chaos of your life, your dreams are remarkably calm and well ordered.”

Dean pushed up to his feet. “Cas, you haven’t answered my prayers in years. I did pray you know. Even though you said you wouldn’t be able to come.”

“I know. I did hear you,” Castiel said. “And I wanted nothing more than to come to you, but as you said, I could not. You did all right, though. Always. You and Sam.”

Dean looked around. The place was familiar. He and Sam had come up this way a long time ago. The summer after his high school graduation. John had sent them off on a job—some easy salt and burn in a place called Gravois Mills, Missouri at the tip of the Lake of the Ozarks. It had taken all of ten hours to wrap up the case and Dean had convinced Sam to stay for a couple of days, just the two of them, kind of a last hoorah before Sam left for Stanford. Before he left for a life that Dean had no place in any longer. 

It had been a sweet couple of days. Just them by the side of the lake, sleeping out in the open, drinking beer and eating junk food, swimming naked in the middle of the day, and making love late into the night under the open sky. It was the first time they’d never had to worry about John or Bobby or some stranger finding them out. It had felt good—so good—to be so free.

Dean looked back at Castiel. “What are we doin’ here, Cas? Why are you talkin’ to me? _How_ are you talkin’ to me?”

Castiel frowned, and it was apparent from his expression—something his re-initiation into the angel class had not erased from his personality—that there was something he really didn’t want to say. “You are dying, Dean.”

“What?! I was just talkin’ to Bobby. What the hell happened?”

Castiel shook his head and turned away, looking out over the water. “I tried to warn you, Dean, of what Sam would do. How far he would go.”

“Sam? What’s Sam got to do with this?” Dean advanced on Castiel, grabbing his shoulder and forcing him back around. “Cas, you’re not makin’ any sense. What the hell do you mean, I’m dying?”

“Dean, you were not just talking to Bobby. Bobby is dead. He has been for many years, and you know this. That is part of the reason I am here now. You are with Sam in the bunker. Dreaming.”

“Okay, dreaming. Got that. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this chat,” Dean said, smiling thinly. It was the smile most people got out of the way of. Dean Winchester and _that_ smile meant someone was about to get their guts pulled inside out. 

Castiel shook his head in exasperation. “Dean, this is a dream inside a dream. But you are waking up, and you are dying because of it.”

“Look, Cas, don’t go all Leo DiCapprio on me now. Just..speak English. Would ya?”

“I cannot adequately explain. Perhaps if…” He closed his eyes a moment as if in consideration of something. “Yes. He’s close enough. I think I can draw him in.”

“Him? Him, who? Cas…” Dean’s thin lipped smile was lifting into a snarl of warning.

“Dean?”

Dean spun around. “Sam? Sammy? What’re you doing here?”

Sam looked disoriented, confused. He looked at Castiel, a tight little arch forming between his brows. “Cas?”

Cas stepped toward him. “Sam, I’ve brought you here to…explain.”

“Explain? Explain what, Cas?” Sam asked. He came down the dock and stood by Dean.

“Explain about the dream, Sam,” Castiel said. “Dean is waking up.”

Sam looked at Dean a long moment. “Ah. I see.” Then he walked down to the end of the dock and stuffed his hands in his pockets, staring down into the water. “Nice pick, Dean. I remember this place.”

Dean followed more slowly, still keeping half an eye on Castiel, he stopped a foot or so from Sam’s shoulder. “Yeah, me too.”

“You know, I thought, after the time we spent here, Dean, that—that you’d come see me at Stanford. Hell, that you’d never even let me go in the first place,” Sam said quietly. “But you never did, and you weren’t even there that night so I could say good-bye.”

Dean tipped his head back, shoulders sagging at the memory of that night. “Oh, I was there, Sam. You just couldn’t see me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Dean looked back down at the back of Sam’s still bowed head. “I couldn’t stand to say it and then see you walk away, so I snuck out the back while you and Dad were yellin’ at each other. I was at the side of the house in the shadows. I watched you come barreling out of the house, Sam. I saw you crying. But I knew—just _knew_ —that if I came out, you wouldn’t leave. You’d stay because I’d beg you to, and I couldn’t have that. You had a chance to get away, Sam. A real bona fide chance. What kind of brother would I have been to take that away from you?”

Sam swore under his breath and turned back to Dean. “You’re right. I would have stayed. But you wouldn’t even have had to ask.”

“I know.” Dean stayed where he was standing even though the muscles all along his arms were twitching to reach out and take Sam into them and hold him tight. “Sam. What’s going on here?”

Sam swore again. “It’s like Cas said. This is a dream, but you aren’t dreaming it from Bobby’s house. You’re dreaming it from the bunker. With me.”

“With you.” Dean paused, head tilting a little as he processed. “How am I dreaming _with_ you, and why?”

“I found a Djinn, Dean. The Alpha Djinn. She—.”

“You found _what_ now, Sammy? A Djinn? You went _looking for_ a Djinn?”

Sam just stood at the end of the dock, hands still in his pockets, looking like the forlorn six year old Sammy who had colored John a picture for his birthday but had been chastised for skipping his sparring lesson with his brother in order to do it. John had left the picture in the motel room when they left. Sammy had never said anything about it and never drew another picture for John again.

“Dean, you can get as mad as you want. It won’t matter,” Sam said. “I did the only thing I could do. Because I can’t live without you. No matter what you think, Dean, no matter how strong you think I am. I can’t live without you. You’re everything I need to live.”

“Sammy…”

“And I thought I was enough for you, but,” Sam looked around him, then let his gaze rest on Castiel at the end of the dock, “I guess I’m not after all.”

Dean fisted his hands and stalked down the dock, grabbing Sam to him and holding him so tight Sam had to gasp to get in a breath. “Of course you are, Sammy.”

Sam wrapped his arms around Dean and buried his face against his neck. “Then stay with me. Please.”

“What, here?”

“No. In the dream the Djinn is giving us. Back at Bobby’s with Ellen and Jo and Talia,” Sam said. “Please, just go back to sleep. Don’t fight it. Let me _be_ all that you need. Please, Dean.”

Dean pulled back a little. “Wait. Giving…us?”

Sam looked down at Dean, saw the dawning comprehension and felt cold defeat growing in his gut. “Yes. Us.”

Dean looked back over his shoulder at Castiel. “You said I was dying. That’s how you’re able to be here. What? To collect me or something? Is there a reaper hanging around here somewhere?”

Castiel looked heartbroken. “Dean, I would not let you go to Heaven alone. I came here for you. And yes, because you are so near the Heavenly plane, I am able to communicate with you now.”

“And this is Sam? The real Sam? Not just some concoction of my mind.”

“No. He is really Sam.”

“Then that means—.” Dean swore viciously, hands locking onto Sam’s biceps. “You let that Djinn suck you dry! You’re…dying? With me?”

Sam hung his head. “Yes.”

It was all he could say. He had no defenses left. He had thought that maybe finally after all that they had been through, all the pain, all the lies, all the deceits, all the…shit that the world had thrown their way, that he and Dean had finally reached a place where both of them were content. He thought they had put enough the past behind them that they could finally be happy with just each other, but he had misjudged. He had underestimated how much more Dean needed to make himself feel complete, and it was going to kill them both.

“Oh, Sammy, how could you?” Dean shook Sam a little, but Sam refused to look up. “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you throw your life away like that?”

“Because it’s not throwing it away!” Sam yelled, twisting his arms hard and throwing Dean away from him so that he stumbled and almost lost his balance. “It’s not throwing it away, if it means we— _you_ —can have the life you deserved to have! You dying at forty-two of fucking cancer? That is such bullshit, Dean! After everything we’ve done and seen and killed? It’s bullshit! You deserved a long happy life, and this was the only way I could give it to you.” Sam pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes sockets, shaking his head back and forth. “And I didn’t want to live without you! I know what that’s like. I’ve done it. And I won’t—I _won’t_! Do it again.”

Dean stood there stricken and silent. He’d sacrificed a lot for his brother over his lifetime. More than probably any other brother ever had or ever would. He’d given up his soul, his life, and everything in between. All for Sam. Because nothing in the world was more important or more worth it than his Sammy. His Sammy with the dimples that made all the girls swoon, and the boys, too, for that matter; with the thousand watt smile that could have lit the world if the sun had suddenly died; with the soulful eyes that could heal Dean’s heart or rend it in two with just a single look. His Sammy was worth all the blood that stained Dean’s soul. He was worth every heartache and bad dream that Dean had ever had and every deadly sin he had ever committed. He was worth every breath in his body and then some.

The thing Dean had never realized…was that Sam felt the same about him. 

Dean pressed a hand over his heart and slowly, slowly, dropped to his knees. It hurt. His chest felt like it was going to explode. There wasn’t room enough in it for the sudden, painfully intense rush of love that bloomed up like an undersea volcano breaching the waves. He gasped, panted, trying to contain it. Jesus…how had he never been able to see?

Sam dropped down beside Dean, taking his weight, keeping him upright as his hands roamed frantically over Dean’s body. “Dean? Dean, what’s wrong?”

Dean lifted his head enough to set it on Sam’s collar bone where he rolled it side to side in slow astonishment. “Sammy. I’m so sorry. I never thought… I just couldn’t imagine how you could ever…feel that same way about me. I’m not worth it, Sam. I was never worth it. I was all for you. Everything I was, everything I did…it was always all for you.”

Sam gave a tight little laugh on the verge of hysterical as he gathered Dean in close again, rocking him just a little. “Yeah, you keep saying that.” He tucked Dean’s head in firmly under his chin and scratched lightly at his scalp. “You have no idea, Dean. _No_ idea. You are so worth it.”

“The blood on my hands, Sam…”

“Dean, the blood on your hands was put there by me. How many times have I screwed up? How many times was I walking the edge and almost went over, or just gave up, and you had to pull me back. Dean, there’s no soul on earth or in heaven that’s stronger than yours for all the shit you had to slog through just to keep your pain in the ass baby brother alive.” Sam looked over Dean’s shoulder at Castiel, eyes begging for support, some kind of confirmation. 

Castiel came forward and laid his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “He is right, Dean. Your soul is clean. Your place—and Sam’s—has always been assured. Any sins you have committed have been in the name of something even greater than God…they have been in the service of your fellow man, and He does not look upon such sacrifices lightly.”

Dean buried his face further into Sam’s neck and finally reached around to hold him tightly. “How, Sam? How do I go back into that dream knowing that you’ll die? How do I live out my life knowing what it cost?”

Before Sam could answer, Castiel interrupted, “Sam, he must decide. I cannot hold us here much longer.”

Sam nudged Dean’s head up, held his face cupped between his hands. “Whatever you choose, Dean. I’m with you. Always.”

Dean covered Sam’s hands with his own, held them tightly, tears running fresh down his cheeks. “Sam, I—.”

“Boy, you need to get your crap together, and quite this bellyachin’,” a gruff voice floated down the beach.

Dean pulled Sam’s hands away and turned to see Bobby walking leisurely along the rocky shore. “Bobby?” He glanced at Castiel. “Is that really him?”

Castiel shook his head. “No. He is from your dream. He represents a part of you…that perhaps you need to listen to.”

Bobby came down the dock, his slightly uneven gait creating a familiar rhythm on hollow planks. “Son, you need to let this go. You’ve carried this guilt around your whole life. Part of it is your Daddy’s, part of it’s Sam’s, part of it’s your own, but none of it’s legitimate. You two have somethin’ special—somethin’ real special—and you need to take hold of it with everything you’ve got. Sam’s trying to give you the greatest gift any man could hope for…to live. Take it, son. Take it and don’t look back.”

“But don’t hang onto us any longer, Dean.” Sam and Dean’s gazes flicked past Bobby to Ellen as she came forward with a huge smile on her face and linked her arm through Bobby’s. “Put us to rest, sweetie. Enjoy what you have in that boy right there in front of you.”

“Because it’s not your fault, Dean.”

“Jo…” Dean’s voice cracked and broke over her name. His would-be little sister, the one he couldn’t protect, the one whose life had been cut impossibly short because he’d walked in the door of her mother’s bar one afternoon and gave her a cause to fight for.

Jo looked at him tenderly, a sweet smile curving her lips. She came right up to them and squatted down. “Hey, Sam.”

“Hey, Jo.” He nodded.

Jo put her hand on Dean’s arm. “You didn’t ask me to fight, Dean. You didn’t make me follow you. You didn’t make me sacrifice myself for the greater good. You couldn’t have anyway. I’m tougher than that,” she said with a tiny smirk. Dean couldn’t help but smile back. She touched his cheek. “I did it all because I thought it was worth it. I did it because I needed to know I’d made a difference, that I’d left my mark. So let us go, Dean. Let the guilt go. Live.”

She stood up, smile broadening. “And I’ve got someone else here who wants to say hello.”

She stepped to the side slightly and Dean’s breath got lost on an exhale as a tall willowy girl with dark waves curling and tumbling down her back padded barefoot down the dock. She stopped just in front of him and knelt down, her soft green sundress billowing out around her. She leaned down enough to bring her hazel green eyes level with Dean’s, and he suddenly felt like he’d never breathe again.

“Talia…”

Sam made a soft sound of awe in his throat, and Dean felt his fingers tighten briefly on his forearms. Dean reached out and touched her face. She turned into it, smiling, dimples showing, light seeming to flow from every pore of her satin skin. She cupped his hand and nuzzled it, never losing eye contact with him.

“Don’t go, Papa. Please.”

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Dean breathed. He looked from Talia to Sam whose face was wet again with fresh tears of his own as he stared, rapt, at his and Dean’s daughter. “Sammy, she’s beautiful. Just like you.”

Sam dropped his forehead to Dean’s shoulder, unable to keep his emotional grip. He pulled Dean in close again, and Dean looped an arm around Talia’s shoulders and pulled her into the embrace as well. He pressed his nose into her soft, sweet smelling hair and breathed deep. She smelled familiar, so much like Sam, but so much like herself, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with a thousand memories of her through the years—years that had never happened, but that he could remember with pristine clarity. 

Every memory was lined with light, from her large, round eyes shining up at him from her crib in the morning, to the feel of her tight little grip on his fingers as he steadied her first steps, to the throb in his chest when he’d had to watch her walk into her first day of school on her own. The pride he felt when she walked across the stage at her high school graduation, and then again with highest honors after college. The possessive love he’d felt the day he turned her care and protection over into the hands of the man who would be her husband on her wedding day. The heart bursting joy that had him near tears when she’d laid his palm against the curve of her belly to feel the fluttering life of his and Sam’s first grandchild inside her, and the same surge of all those age old emotions he’d felt for her all her life when he held the tiny bundle of sleeping baby Robert John Winchester-Kissinger in his arms for the very first time. 

All those memories were in his head and more, and he knew all he had to do was let go in order to hold them. 

Sam pulled him in closer, and as if Sam had seen all that he had seen in those few seconds, he pressed his lips to Dean’s ear and whispered, “Dream with me, Dean. Come dream with me, and I’ll show you every day, in every way, how much you deserve that life.”

Dean pressed his eyes closed and nodded. It was all he could do. His heart was overflowing in his chest and he didn’t know how words would ever again be enough to express what he wanted to be able to tell Sam every day for the rest of eternity…how much he loved him.

He felt Sam’s smile, his warm breath against the side of his face, his arms drawing him in tighter and tighter until Dean was sure they weren’t two people any longer, but one inside the other, melded together forever, and then he felt everything around them falling away into darkness.


	13. Home To Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one feels a little weak to me, and I sincerely apologize, but I was having a really tough time putting this one to bed. Hang in there, though, it's not the end...not quite.

“Dean! Dean, can you hear me?”

Dean surged upward from the couch, chest heaving, straight into Sam’s embrace. Dean’s arms locked around Sam’s chest, holding him with bear hug intensity. “Sam. Jesus, Sammy. Sam. Sam.”

It was all Dean could get out, just the litany of Sam’s name over and over like a prayer and a promise and a plea.

“God, Dean! I thought I lost you.” Sam pressed his face into Dean’s shoulder. “I thought you were gone.”

Dean clung to Sam, trembling, hooked his chin over Sam’s shoulder and whispered near his ear. “I was dreaming, Sam. I was…I thought I was dying.”

Sam pulled back, eyes wide with alarm. “But you’re…all right now. You’re here. With me.”

Dean stared at him a second, searching Sam’s bright eyes while Sam held his breath. Dean shook his head slowly. “Yeah. Yes, I’m here.” He threaded his hands into Sam’s hair and pressed their foreheads together for just a minute. “Love you, Sammy. So much. I just…”

“Hey, hey,” Sam hushed him, scratching lightly through the hair at Dean’s neck and rubbing his thumbs gently around the curve of his ear and over his cheekbones, up over the arch of his brows. “It’s okay. I’m here. I got you. And I love you, too. Always.”

Dean nodded jerkily, swallowing back against tears. Sam tilted his face up a little. “Dean, how’re you feeling? Okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He nodded again, letting his brain take stock. The pain was gone. Like it and never been. He lifted away from Sam enough to look around the room, to look at Bobby, to finally bring his gaze back to Sam. The world was staying put, holding steady on its respective axis, and everything felt…right. The puzzle pieces had slotted back into place. The picture was finally clear. Sam was here with him.

That was all he needed.

“Hey, Bobby! We’re home!” Ellen’s voice came from the front door. “Brought you some lunch and—.” Her voice dropped off as she turned to see Sam and Dean tangled in each other on the couch looking like they’d been through a war of cosmic scale on the emotional front. “Boys, you okay? Bobby, what’s going on?”

“Uncle Dean! Uncle Sam!” Billy’s excited squeal preceded his barreling into Sam’s hip by a few seconds as he came running in the door behind Ellen.

Sam reluctantly loosened an arm from around Dean to give Billy a hug. “Hey, buddy. How are you?”

Bobby stood up and went over to Ellen, palms up and open. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. Now.”

“Now?” Ellen said skeptically, shifting Talia to her other hip.

Dean looked up. Talia was staring at him, arms reaching out. She let out a soft, bubbly gargle and put her hand against Ellen’s cheek to get her attention. Ellen turned her head to kiss her fingers absently and bounce her a little.

“Ellen, I—.” Dean said just as Talia let out a frustrated shriek.

“Hey, baby girl,” Ellen shushed her, but looked over at Dean and then to Talia who was straining her weight against Ellen’s supportive hold. 

“Nana, Tally wants her papa,” Billy said, pointing at the way Talia’s tiny hands were fisting and un-fisting as she reached backward toward Dean.

“Well, sweetie, I’m sorry,” Ellen said to the struggling baby, and then bent over to pass Talia into Dean’s waiting arms. “There you go. There’s your papa.”

Dean gathered the tiny girl into his embrace like he hadn’t seen her in a year, pressing kisses to her downy hair and cuddling her close to his chest. A tear slipped out of the corner of his eye and dripped onto her cheek. She reached up and grabbed at Dean’s pinky finger and held on tight, pulling to her mouth and closing her eyes in contentment as she settled more completely against his chest.

“Dean, you all right?” Sam asked softly, putting his hand on Talia’s back.

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right.”

Ellen watched the scene, still confused, and turned to Bobby. “Bobby, what in hell is going on here?”

Bobby put his arm around her and pulled her in close to kiss her softly and then rest his head atop hers. “It’s okay, Ellen. Everything’s as it should be. Don’t you worry about it.”

Ellen wasn’t completely mollified, but she turned her attention back to the boys on her couch and it pulled at every heartstring she had to see them, sitting there together, eyes clear of all the shadows that they had carried for so long, all the pain that had colored their world, holding a fresh and beautiful life between them that had washed away all their sins with her very first smile and set them down a new road that only lead to happiness in the end.

“Billy, honey, come ‘ere and let Sam and Dean have a minute,” Ellen beckoned the bouncing five year old who was still hanging off Sam’s side. “You boys want to join us for lunch? I’ve got plenty.”

Sam looked at Dean, whose attention was still wholly focused on Talia and then looked back at Ellen. “Thanks, Ellen. We appreciate the offer, but I think…we need to go home now.”

Dean raised his head and looked into Sam’s expectant gaze. He smiled, and it felt like the first time in forever, fresh and clean and unhindered. “Yeah. Let’s go home, Sammy.”

 

Dean leaned on the rail of Talia’s crib, chin resting on his overlapped hands. She was fast asleep, one fist pressed to her mouth, the rest of her sprawled out corner to corner on the mattress. He smiled a little as he recognized his own sleeping habits in her. He wondered which one of them she would grow up looking most like. It was never really for certain which of them had been the one to get Jo pregnant, and they’d refused to get a test to confirm it, since it didn’t matter to either of them in the end. Talia was theirs. She could have no blood relation to either of them and it wouldn’t matter. She was theirs now and forever, and Dean was going to protect her and keep her safe for as long as he breathed.

But her hair was soft and getting darker, curling at the base of her skull like Sam’s had when he was tiny. Yeah, she had a lot of Sam in her. Maybe she would be tall just like him, just as graceful, just as beautiful.

“Hey,” Sam’s whisper came from the doorway. “I thought I lost you back here. You fall asleep rocking her?”

He came across the carpeted floor and stood by Dean, elbow resting on the edge of the crib and rubbed big, loose circles across Dean’s back with his free hand. 

Dean shook his head a little. “Nope. Just lookin’.”

Sam laughed softly. “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re going to spoil her silly.”

“Yeah, probably.”

They stood in silence, looking down at their sleeping daughter.

“Dean,” Sam said a little hesitantly. “Do you remember what you were dreaming?”

Dean frowned a little. “No, not much. It’s kind of splotchy and the more I think about it, the less I can remember. I think… I think Cas was there.”

“Cas? Like, the real Cas?” Sam said, surprised.

“Don’t know. Maybe. Don’t think he can do that anymore. Least that’s what he said before he left.”

“Yeah, I suppose he did.”

Dean arched his back a little into Sam’s hand which had slowed in its circular pattern. “I don’t remember anything specific, really. Just…when I woke up everything felt…different.”

Sam tensed and Dean straightened up, turning to loop an arm around his waist and tug him in close. “No, it’s all right. Not different, wrong; like before. Different, like…everything finally fit. Like all this weight I’d been slogging around with—.”

“Dean—.”

“Yeah, I know, we promised to let all that go. For Talia.” Dean nodded. “But that’s a tall order, Sam. I know you know that.”

Sam dipped his head, a frown pulling a little at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, I do.”

“But this was different, Sam, this wasn’t just all the ‘stuff’ I carry around—will probably always carry around—this was deeper.” Dean pulled Sam around and closed the circle of his arms. “This was like my heart had finally come home to rest.”

Sam looked down at Dean. His eyes were shining in the soft glow of the nightlight on Talia’s dresser. He lifted his hands to Dean’s face, cupping his jaw, and angled his head a little to brush his lips softly against Dean’s. Dean molded himself into the kiss, snugging his arms around Sam’s waist and pressing up into it. Sam flattened his hands against Dean’s back, drawing him in, and parted his lips the smallest fraction, licking along the line between Dean’s lips with the tip of his tongue, so softly, urging them to open for him. Dean complied, letting Sam dip into his mouth slow and soft and warm, exploring every texture and surface until he couldn’t breathe and had to pull back.

“Sam, I think—I think we should go into the other room? She’ll need a psychotherapist before she can talk if we do this in here.”

Sam grinned, dimples showing sharply in the dim, angled light. “Yeah, we should.”

Sam tugged Dean down the hallway to their bedroom and kicked the door mostly closed, then he pulled Dean fully body back up against him. “I want to make love to you Dean Winchester,” he murmured against Dean’s throat as he trailed kisses down along the strong tendon there that had begun to stand out as Dean strained to tip his head further back so Sam could worship his skin with that soft perfect mouth of his. “I want to open you up, body, heart and soul and pour myself into you.”

Dean’s breath rushed out of him. “God, Sammy…”

Sam guided Dean back onto the bed, laying him out corner to corner, and climbed up over him, straddling his thighs but not putting his weight down on them. He pushed his hands up under Dean’s t-shirt, pressing his palms flat against Dean’s belly, moving upward to feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, and upward further to feel the steady strong beat of his heart, and then finally shoving the material up and over his head and tugging it free of his arms.

“You, too,” Dean whispered, catching at the hem of Sam’s tank top. Sam lifted it over his head, long torso stretching and flexing with the smooth movement, revealing miles of beautiful pale skin that made Dean’s mouth water to kiss and lick and touch it. “So beautiful, Sammy. Jesus, nothing as beautiful as you anywhere.”

Sam flushed under Dean’s words and his reverent gaze, and he dropped forward on his arms to reclaim Dean’s mouth in a deep, slow kiss. Dean reached for Sam’s hips, pulling him downward to rest in the cradle of his thighs. Sam was already long and hard and Dean could feel the heat of him through their thin sleep pants. He tilted his hips up, sliding their lengths slowly against each other, the slip of soft fabric creating a sweet friction, and Sam gasped into his mouth. Dean slid his hand down from Sam’s hip, snagged the waistband of their pants with his thumb and finger and pushed them downward. 

“Wanna feel you, Sam. Wanna feel you all hot and hard against me.” Dean fisted them both and Sam made a choked sound, thrusting into Dean’s tightly circled fingers. Dean mimicked the movement and wrapped his other hand around the back of Sam’s head and into his hair. “Jesus, Sam…so good. So good…”

“Dean, I want…”

“What, baby boy?” Dean murmured. “What do you want?”

“You, Dean,” Sam gasped, thrusting again into Dean’s hand, ending the long, slow stroke on a moan. “I just want you.”

Dean sifted his fingers through Sam’s hair a couple of times, pulled him down for another kiss. “I’m all yours, Sam. Every part of me. All yours.”

Sam shifted his weight to just one arm and yanked at their pants, kicking them clear and stretching himself out on top of Dean fully, pinning him to the mattress with his weight, locking Dean’s hand between them. He lowered himself down on his elbows and nosed Dean’s chin up to exposed his throat where Sam planted a line of tender kisses that wrung the tiniest sweet sounding sighs from Dean and made him shiver uncontrollably. Sam kept his weight down and slid inch by slow inch down Dean’s torso, kissing and licking as he went, painting a swath over each hard nipple with his tongue and then suckling gently at each in turn before moving down further to litter kisses all along each of Dean’s ribs, following the curve of them around toward his back and then forward again until he was faced with the warm, soft expanse of Dean’s flat belly. Here Sam rested his cheek a moment, reveling in the tickle from the fine dusting of hairs across Dean’s skin and the so soft texture of the skin itself covering over the strength of rippling muscle beneath. He turned his mouth down and breathed slow and warm across Dean’s skin, making him shiver again and press up against Sam’s weight still holding him down. He felt Dean’s cock throb against his chest, and he felt the hot slickness of the first sticky drops of Dean’s flaring desire.

Sam slid lower, until he was resting between Dean’s open thighs and had his cock front and center under his mouth. He breathed over the taut skin and watched how Dean responded with a jerk and moan, hands going out to his sides to fist in the sheets. Sam ran his tongue up the hard length of Dean and kissed the very tip. This brought Dean’s shoulders curling forward off the mattress and wrung a curse from him.

“Fuck. Sammy! Please…”

Sam lifted on his elbows a little and cradled Dean’s cock in his hands, lifting it, running his thumbs up and down the sides, tracing veins that were flooded to bursting with blood, pushing the velvety skin up toward the swollen head and admiring the iron hardness beneath. He breathed over Dean’s thickened flesh again and watched the responsive jerk and tiny blurt of cum that dribbled down over Sam’s fingers. Sam dipped down and slid his lips over Dean’s soft, swollen head, swirling his tongue all the way around before gliding down his full length and pulling Dean into the back of his throat. He swallowed and swallowed again and felt a salty heat at the back of his tongue. He hummed against Dean’s cock, pressing his tongue up hard against the thick vein on the underside and worked it up to the tip, drawing off enough to lick at the sensitive slit and then go back down, sucking long and hard.

Dean was breathless and whining above him, begging in half words and curses. Sam was rock hard and pressed painfully against the mattress. He rolled his hips once, twice, as he pulled off of Dean and slid back down and then pulled off completely to a near panicked outcry and Dean’s hands scrabbling to grab at his shoulders and press him back down. Sam pushed Dean’s thighs further apart, stuck a finger in his mouth all the way to the last knuckle withdrew it all slick and shiny with spit, and then pushed it up between Dean’s cheeks until he could feel the tension of that puckered circle of muscle.

“God…damn!” Dean yelled and pushed downward against Sam’s finger. He pulled his legs up, planting his heels for leverage and tried to get further down on Sam’s long digit.

“Told you, Dean,” Sam breathed against Dean’s still throbbing cock. “Gonna open you up and pour myself into you…’till you can’t take anymore.”

Dean writhed, shoving first one shoulder and then the other in to the mattress as he twisted, trying to get Sam’s finger further up into him. He spread his legs as far as they would go, rolled his hips and pressed downward. “Sam, I can’t—.”

“Shh. I know. I know. Just let me open you up and—.”

“No!” Dean curled forward, grabbing at Sam’s shoulders. “I want you. In me. Now.”

“Dean, I—.”

“Do it!”

Sam shifted up onto his knees and rolled Dean’s hips upward. Dean caught at his knees and pulled them tight to his chest, opening himself to Sam. Sam was leaking and ready and he at least took a second to slick himself up before he leaned down over Dean and pressed between his cheeks, meeting the firm, unstretched resistance of his ass. “Jesus, Dean, I don’t think—.”

Dean dropped his hips a little, putting pressure against Sam’s swollen head, flexing his butt muscles and making Sam gasp hard and thrust involuntarily. Dean bit back a cry at the burn and stretch of his hole as Sam’s head breached him, pushing in quick and hard. Sam froze above him.

“Don’t stop,” Dean huffed, grimacing. “Don’t stop, Sammy.” He left off his knees to spread his hands over Sam’s ribs and drag him upward. “Fill me up. You promised. Sam, just…fill me.”

“Jesus, Dean…” Sam’s head dropped down between his shoulders, hair falling in his eyes, and he pushed up and in, feeling Dean’s tight, dry heat around his cock like a vice, but it only served to make him harder, and he couldn’t resist the guttural thrust and groan that came out of him. “Dean, I can’t. It’s…too much!”

Dean curled forward, abdominal muscles standing out it carved lines, reached under his thighs and curled his fingers roughly into Sam’s ass, yanking his hips forward hard.

“Fuck!” Sam shouted and fell panting over Dean. He was seated up to the root in Dean’s ass and all he could do was lay there and throb. Dean was making tiny sounds of distress mixed with need beneath him and he could feel the flex and squeezed of Dean’s muscles around him. His belly clenched and Dean lifted underneath him and squeezed his ass hard. Sam gasped and cried against Dean’s chest. His balls were tight up against him in warning of the oncoming orgasm, and Dean’s cock was hard and pulsing against his belly. 

“Dean, I can’t…I gotta come. God! I gotta come, Dean!” Sam panted into Dean’s side as he curled forward in one last effort to stave off the impending rush.

“Do it,” Dean urged him, squeezing again. “Jesus Christ, just do it! I wanna feel you come, Sammy, deep inside. Wanna feel it…now!”

Sam’s back arched, shoulders rising high up, head thrown back as he thrust into Dean even deeper and came in huge pulsing waves that Dean could feel ripple like the seismic aftershock of a catastrophic earthquake through his insides. He clung tight to Sam and rode his orgasm up and over, cresting it with his hips high up off the bed, fingers digging into Sam’s biceps, throat gone ragged with a hoarse outcry. 

They collapsed in a sweaty tangle on the bed, chests heaving, Sam still buried deep inside Dean.

“That was not—,” Sam wheezed, trying to catch his breath, “—not quite what I had in mind.”

Dean gave a breathless laugh. “When are we _ever_ what anyone expects?”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” Sam agreed. He reached one long arm over to the side of the bed, jerked at the comforter and flicked it up and over the two of them. Dean gasped and grimaced again at the movement. 

“Fuck. I did hurt you, didn’t I?” Sam asked.

“Mmm. I’m not gonna lie,” Dean said, forcing a smile. “I’ll feel it in the morning guaranteed, but…damn, Sammy, it was worth it. You are so amazing.”

Sam blushed and dipped his head back down to rest on Dean’s chest. Dean slowly carded his fingers through Sam’s hair. They needed to get up. Get cleaned up. Before everything dried to a sticky, crusty mess, and the heat of their lovemaking burned off to leave behind chilled skin that the haphazardly thrown comforter would be little defense against. But it felt good to just lay together in the quiet with Sam’s warm weight spread across him, all his muscles liquid and relaxed, warm breath curling across Dean’s skin as he started to doze.

Sam’s hand crept up to rest flat on Dean’s breastbone. His fingers curled a little and then flattened back out. “Dean?”

“”Yeah, Sam.”

“Are you…happy?”

Dean opened his eyes, senses coming back to center at the hesitant sound in Sam’s tone. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” He lifted his head, bracing it up on his bent arm so he could look down at Sam. “We’ve had this conversation, remember?”

“I know,” Sam said quietly, ducking his head so he didn’t have to meet Dean’s gaze. His fingers were moving against Dean’s sternum like he was fiddling with something that wasn’t there anymore. “I just need to know, I guess. That this life is enough for you, that you’re happy enough to stay in it.”

Dean scowled and tugged at Sam’s hair until he was forced to look up. “Sam, you’re talking crazy. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m perfectly happy here with you and Talia. And, hell…Sam, even if we lost it all tomorrow—the bunker, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, God forbid it Talia, even the damn Impala—I’d still be okay.” Sam scowled this time and Dean curled forward to plant a kiss on his forehead right where those worried brows arched together so hard. “As long as I have you, Sam. Everything will be all right. Just you. You’re enough for me. For always.”

Something clicked into place in Sam’s chest. He tried to drag in a breath but his heart was vying for space with his lungs as the most profound sense of love welled up inside him. He pushed up on his arms and dove over the side of the bed, rifling through his jeans from earlier.

“Hey!” Dean flung his arm up to block an elbow to his nose as Sam came back up and over him, holding something in his fist. “What the hell, Sam!”

Sam sat up on his haunches, comforter slipping and bunching down around his hips. He put one hand flat against Dean’s chest and then slowly unfurled his fingers. The amulet dropped down on its leather cord.

Dean snatched at it, relief skipping across his brows. “Hey…thanks! I thought I left this at Bobby’s . Dropped it or something…” He slowed at the serious look on Sam’s face. “Sam, what’s wrong?”

 Sam spread the cord open, held it so that Dean could put his head through. After a confused second, Dean leaned up and let Sam drop the amulet back around his neck. He looked up. “You okay, Sammy?”

“Is it still too heavy, Dean?” Sam asked, voice breaking a little.

Dean skated his hands up Sam’s arms, feeling the sudden tension there. He tightened his hands at Sam’s elbows. “No. No, Sammy. It’s not too heavy. It’s…perfect.”

Sam leaned back on his heels and rested his hands, splayed, across Dean’s ribcage. He was crying.

“Come on, man…no chick flick moments,” Dean said, half mocking, trying to lighten the mood. “You know the rules. No crying after sex. You’ll bruise my ego.”

Sam just shook his head, tongue tangled on the million words he wanted to say but that would be meaningless to his cause the moment they were spoken aloud. Nothing could put a voice to the feeling inside him right now. 

Dean reached up with both hands and framed Sam’s face. “Sammy. Hey, it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay. I’m here.”

“You are,” Sam whispered. 

“Yeah. Always,” Dean said, tugging gently at his brother. “Now, come down here, you big oaf.”

Sam slithered back down against Dean, covering him with his long, gangly limbs like some new breed of four tentacled octopus. He nestled his head beneath Dean’s chin and folded his arms up under Dean’s shoulders and hooked his feet around Dean’s ankles. Dean huffed a laugh as Sam embraced the air out of his lungs, and he hugged Sam right back.

Sam fell asleep to the rhythm of Dean’s heart beneath his cheek, breathing warm across the amulet resting in the hollow of Dean’s throat, and Dean drifted off blanketed by the strength of his little brother’s everlasting love, resting at last in the certain knowledge that he was finally and completely happy.


	14. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, we've come to the end...

“Hey.”

Sam leaned over the back of the couch with a tumbler of whisky held out in his fingertips. Dean looked up and smiled.

“Hey, yourself.” He reached up and took the tumbler and then hooked his index finger through Sam’s and pulled him around the couch to sit down beside him. Sam wedged himself into the corner and hauled a leg up so that Dean could slide forward and lean into his chest. Dean shivered a little, and Sam’s arm tightened around him.

“Cold?”

“Nah, not really.”

Sam reached up and tugged the light wool blanket down off the back of the couch and arranged it over Dean anyway. Dean gave a little contented sigh and sank further into Sam’s embrace.

“Good day, huh,” Sam said, scratching through Dean’s hair lightly. It was a little shorter now than he used to wear it, he said it was to hide the fact that it was thinning, but Sam kept telling him he was full of it, and it had turned salt and pepper gray several years ago. 

“Mmm. Really good,” Dean agreed, his eyelids going to half-mast under Sam’s soothing touch. “Who’d have thunk we’d ever be watching our grandkid graduate from college?”

Sam smiled. “Yeah.”

Dean reached up and ran a hand against Sam’s jaw, fingers sifting up into his hair. It was still fairly long, and just as soft as it had always been, shot through with streaks of white at the temples and forehead that always made Dean think of some English aristocrat for some reason. “I think the only time I’ve been prouder was when I saw you walk across that stage.”

Sam snorted a little. “Only took me twenty years.”

“Hey, perseverance counts for a lot,” Dean said, giving Sam’s hair a gentle tug until he leaned down to kiss Dean gently on the mouth. “Everything you went through, for all those years, and we still managed to make a respectable gentleman out of you.”

“Well, I don’t know about respectable,” Sam said slyly, licking at Dean’s lips with the tip of his tongue.

“You know I can legitimately call you a dirty old man now,” Dean teased, opening up for Sam slow and easy, letting him test the warmth and taste of whisky on Dean’s tongue with his own. 

“Gonna clean me up, big brother? Set me straight?” Sam murmured into Dean’s mouth.

Dean’s breath caught and he pushed his hand deeper into Sam’s hair, tugging him downward. Sam followed his direction, taking Dean’s glass and setting it blindly on the table so he could wrap both his arms more fully around his brother. He kept kissing Dean with long, slow strokes like breathing across embers to entice the fire to dance again. 

They had left their desperation and fear behind years ago, evolving into a deep rooted, slow moving kind of passion that had the strength of cosmic ages in the strata to support it. They had quit running from the past and barreling toward the future, finding peace in the moment of now.

Dean felt a blossom of warmth unfurl inside him and it had nothing to do with the whisky. He pulled back enough that he could focus his gaze on Sam. “Sammy. You are the…most amazing thing. Ever.”

Sam swallowed thickly. “You, too, brother.”

Dean nodded slowly and let his hand drift down to twine with Sam’s on his chest and relaxed back to look into the vibrant dancing flames in the hearth. “What did we do to deserve this, Sammy?”

Sam absently brushed the backs of his knuckles up and down Dean’s jaw as he answered. “Saved the world a few times. Averted the apocalypse. Died. More than once.” He bent his head to press his lips lightly against Dean’s temple. “Raised the most beautiful daughter in the world.”

Dean huffed a breath, tucking Sam’s hand up close under his chin and examining the fine lines that had formed there over the years, kissing the knuckles that were slightly swollen with arthritis from the biting cold outside. “I suppose that’s something, huh?”

“I’d say.” Sam rubbed his thumb over the curve of Dean’s hand where he held it. His other hand stroked lightly at Dean’s brow, at the crows feet that had etched deep over the last couple of decades, more from laughter now than pain, at the lines that had grooved themselves into his weathered features from a lifetime of wind and rain and fire, dust and ash and death. 

Sam’s hand stilled as he stared deep into the fire. “Dean?”

“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean sighed. He was starting to drowse in the warmth from the hearth and the steady rhythm of Sam’s heart at his back, and the gentle stroke of Sam’s fingers.

“Dean, I hope you realize—.” Sam swallowed against the fine tremors in his voice. “I hope you realize that this—all this—our home, Talia, our life here, everything we’ve done these last years…it’s been everything I’ve ever dreamed of having, and I can’t tell you how much it means that I’ve gotten to share it with you.”

Dean smiled and his voice was rough and slightly broken when he replied, “No chick-flick moments, Sammy…”

Sam smiled too, but ducked his head to rub his damp cheek against his shoulder. “Yeah, I know. I just…you need to understand, Dean. As hard as it was, as much as I hated being a Hunter, as much shit as we both had to suffer…I wouldn’t trade one second of it.” He pressed his lips to the top of Dean’s head again, eyes squeezing closed against fresh tears. “Not ever. I just need you to…know that.”

Dean twisted in his arms and reached up to clasp the back of Sam’s neck in a hard grip. His eyes flashed intense in the fire light, and for a second, the last forty years vanished in from Dean’s face. He was the cocky, fresh faced kid that had come into Sam’s apartment in the middle of the night, under the guise of jonesing for a beer, to ask his kid brother to come back on the road with him. And Sam had gone. He had followed Dean, and kept following him. Down that road that twisted and turned, had a deadman’s curve to Hell, and a steep climb to Heaven, had been paved in gravel and glass and good intentions, and had led to now—this moment in front of a fire in the house of dearly departed friend on a night when they had celebrated the start of a new chapter in the life of a loved one while the snow fell in silent flakes outside.

“Sam,” Dean said in a ruined whisper, “I know. I’ve always known.”

Sam pulled Dean in tight and wrapped him up in his arms, clinging to the iron strength of his brother’s heart and soul just as he had his whole long life from the very first moment Dean had held him in his arms as a baby to this. 

“Love you, Dean.”

“Love you, too, Sammy.”

 

The embers in the hearth were a mere glow when the soft flutter of wings and a gentle breeze fanned them to cast long shadows over the figure in the corner. Sam and Dean were stretched out on the couch still tangled in one another, and the new arrival was loathe to disturb them.

“Dean.”

“Cas?” Dean murmured sleepily, moving his cheek against Sam’s chest and then settling back into sleep. 

Castiel knelt down in front of the couch and put his hand ever so gently on the shoulder that had once born his mark. “Dean.”

Hunter’s instincts died hard, but Castiel’s touch was so welcome and long sought that Dean’s body recognized it unerringly, and he leaned up off of Sam to look right into the angel’s eyes. “Cas…”

“Hello, Dean.” Castiel rose up slowly as Dean turned and twisted into a sitting position, shaking Sam awake gently.

“Sam? Sammy, wake up. You gotta tell me if I’m dreaming.”

Sam rubbed at his eyes with a finger and thumb and shivered a little at the loss of Dean’s body heat then he spied the trench coat and followed it up to a pair of brilliant blue eyes set in a perpetually tender visage. His own eyes went wide, and he grinned wider still. “Cas! Wow, how’re you—? What are you doing here, Cas?” 

Castiel smiled, but it held the kind of sadness that comes at the end of an epic journey. He looked around at the small room bathed in firelight, nodding as if in approval, then his gaze came back to center on Sam. “It’s time, Sam.”

“Time?” Sam asked.

“Whoa, whoa, Cas,” Dean held up a hand, squinting up at the angel. “Time for what, exactly?”

Cas kept his focus on Sam. “Time for the dream to end.”

Dean scowled and looked over at Sam. “Sam, what’s he talking about?” His swiveled back to Castiel. “Cas, what’re you talking about?”

Sam gave a tiny shake of his head and Castiel tilted his a fraction as if in answer to some unasked question. Sam breathed out long and slow and reached forward to take Dean’s hand in his. He pulled it to rest in his lap, refusing to look into Dean’s eyes.

“It’s time to go, Dean.”

“Go where?” Dean asked, looking from angel to brother and back again, agitation clear in his drawn features. “Sam, what the hell is going on here?”

Sam looked up at Cas. “Are we…?”

“In a moment or two,” Castiel said. He held out both his hands. Sam reached out and took it, standing up. Dean stubbornly refused, scowling all the harder. “Dean, please,” Cas urged. “Just take my hand. All will be clear in a moment.”

Dean grudgingly reached to take Castiel’s hand, still holding tightly to Sam’s with his other. “Cas, if you don’t come clean…I thought the gates of Heaven were permanently shut, closed to anyone but the invited, no more free passes. So, how’re you here? Did someone dig up the key? Am I dreaming again?”

“The dream is done, Dean,” Castiel said. “It’s time to come home.”

Castiel’s hand tightened around Dean’s and before he could use another breath to protest Castiel’s cryptic explanations the living room of Bobby’s old house washed away in swaths of blurred color and left behind darkness, a chill breeze, and the rustle of dried leaves.

Dean felt the snug comfort of soft denim against his legs and the weight of his old canvas coat on his shoulders. Sam’s hand was still in his, but the texture had changed, it no longer felt deprived of the strength that had once wielded a demon knife with killing skill. He looked up at his brother.

“Sam…” 

Sam’s face was young, twenty years or more washed away in an instant. The hard set of his jaw was softened again, like it had been in the years before he had grown so painfully thin from the stress and strain of his life. It was an unhealthy leanness that had followed him even after they left off hunting and had Talia. 

Sam smiled at him and it was beautiful. His teeth flashed wide and white in the growing dark, and Dean caught the sparkle in his eyes. “Hey, Dean.”

Dean lifted their hands and saw that his too was unlined and refortified with the strength of his youth. His whole body felt lighter, like gravity had less of a hold on him. 

But he wanted to know why.

“Cas.” Dean’s tone held a note of dangerous warning. 

Castiel turned a little from where he had wandered in view of a clearing a short distance below them. “Come look.”

Dean kept a tight hold on Sam’s hand and cautiously approached the outcrop where Cas stood. He looked over.

“Garth?” 

Dean squinted into the dark and saw a double pyre built in the center of the clearing. Garth was reverently pouring gasoline over and around the stacks of dry wood piled high and holding the wrapped bodies. Dean edged closer to Sam, felt his brother’s strong arm go around his shoulders.

“Dean? You all right?” Sam asked.

“Sam…I…” Dean stumbled and stuttered over the thoughts blinking through his brain in and out of focus like lightening bugs in a deep forest. “Sam, whose bodies are those?”

Sam bowed his head a little, tightened his arm. “It’s us, Dean.”

“I thought…yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, across his jaw. “It wasn’t a dream.”

“Actually,” Cas said. “You’ve been dreaming all this time, Dean.”

Dean looked at him, eyes hollow as he looked back into the memories of the last twenty years. But had it been twenty years?

“No. The dream of you and Sam,” Dean said. “At the lake. That wasn’t a dream.”

Sam shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. That was where you made your final choice.”

“What choice, Sam? What choice did I make?” Dean’s voice was thin and finely calm. Too calm. He stared down into the clearing as Garth stepped back from the pyre and looped his arm around a young woman. “Natalie…”

“You made the choice to stay in the Djinn’s dream with me, Dean. To live out your life, raise a beautiful daughter, help raise a strong and handsome grandson, and finally find the peace that you—above anyone else that I know—finally deserved to have.”

Dean kept his gaze on Garth as he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and flicked it to life.

“But it wasn’t real, Sam. None of it.” Dean gasped, a single deep sob punched out of him. “Talia wasn’t real.”

“It was all as real as we wanted it to be, Dean,” Sam said, looping his other arm around Dean as his brother started to sag with the revelation and weight of what it meant when those bodies below him finally burned.

“But…what now?”

Castiel turned more fully toward Dean, laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’m here to take you both home, Dean.”

Dean’s blank, empty eyes flicked to Castiel before tracking back to Garth’s hand, holding the wavering flame. “And what do I want with Heaven, when my family—my life—wasn’t even real.”

Beside him, he felt Sam twitch like he’d been physically struck by the words, but he couldn’t bring himself to retract them. He wanted Garth to throw the flame, to set the bodies alight. He wanted to burn away with them, to vaporize into the atmosphere and become nothing. He felt like a husk, emptied and dried, filled with nothing but dust and hopelessness and the ashes of dead memories. 

Castiel’s hand moved up to the nape of Dean’s neck, eyes stern when he gave Dean a light shake. “Your family is here, Dean. Sam is here. Your Heaven will be with him and all the happiest memories that you have created together. All the memories, Dean.” Castiel touched Dean’s temple lightly with his finger. “Your father and mother. Bobby and Ellen, Jo and Kevin…Talia. They are all in your memory, Dean, whether they lived here in _this_ life or not. You will have them. I promise.”

“Cas?”

It was a bare whisper, breathing the softest sigh of hope across a dying ember to rekindle the heat of its light. 

Below, Garth paused to lift his head in their direction, almost like he was scenting the wind. He stared straight at them.

“Do it, Garth…” Dean whispered. 

Sam’s arms pulled Dean around and in, flat to his chest, tucking his head down under his chin. They watched in silence as Garth turned back to the pyre. 

And just as twilight was leaving off her lavender gown to fold herself in the deep of night, Garth tossed the lighter onto the pyre and the gasoline and wood caught with a vigor, flaring to life and climbing high, sending sparks up to join the glittering tapestry of stars overhead.

A light snow began to fall.

Castiel never took his hand from Dean’s neck. He moved around to lay his other hand at the base of Sam’s skull and squeezed gently. His voice was low and soft and pitched almost to a prayer when he spoke.

“Sam. Dean. The two of you have lived the fullest of lives. You have battled for and saved the greatest of God’s works from the darkness of Lucifer and his minions, and even from the neglect of His own hand. You have suffered loss beyond the comprehension of man, but always harbored hope and the will to continue on, to survive. You have sacrificed in the name of the most worthy of causes…love…for each other. So, to you, does Heaven bow down and offer up all of her grace.”

Dean sighed into Sam’s shoulder and wound his arms up and around his brother’s strong, broad back. “S’pose they’re ready for us up there, little brother?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Sam said. 

“Other direction, Sammy. Hell kicked us out and locked up behind us.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, I guess they did. So…you ready for this?”

“You kidding?” Dean said, snugging himself more firmly against Sam. “I was born ready. Let’s kick this one.”

Sam laughed again and buried his nose in Dean’s soft hair. 

And as the flames of the funeral pyre below gained strength and height and cast long shadows to swallow the shades standing above on the outcrop of a hill, an angel rolled his eyes to Heaven and sent a warning ahead that Sam and Dean Winchester were on their way.


End file.
